ABSTRACT
The most significant event that shaped the trajectory of Jabes's thinking and writing is, undoubtedly, the fact that during the 1956 Suez Crisis when Egypt and Israel were in conflict with one another, the President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, expelled the Jewish community from Egypt. In 1957 Jabes left behind all his personal possessions in Cairo and emigrated with his family to France. The exile from Egypt, Jabes remarks, was a pivotal moment where he had to confront his Jewish identity on a regular basis, which prompted him to read the classic Jewish texts – The Torah, the Talmud, and the Kabbalah. His confrontation with his being a Jew in exile and his subsequent study of classic Jewish texts, he explains, were the origin of the series of books that followed, including I Build My House, The Book of Questions, The Book of Resemblances, The Book of Margins, The Book of Shares, and the posthumously published Book of Hospitality Jabes was awarded France's National Grand Prize for Poetry in 1987, but more importantly his influence upon postmodern poetry (see poetry, postmodern) and the thinking of such philosophers as Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and Gabrield Bounoure has shaped and defined the postmodern landscape.
