This cannot be response to Yerach Gover-any more than his vituperations respond to my essay, on the violence of the hyphen in the phrase Judeo-Christian. I will, however, attempt to do Mr. Gover the justice of indicating what I take his arguments to be and of restating some of my claims in terms that will perhaps be more available to him. These exercises in clarification will lead to very brief opening of the one question I find pertinently raised by his response, that of the relationship he imagines to inhere between his deeply felt (and no doubt earned) political commitments and the responsibility to read. Mr. Gover-albeit implicitly and confusedly-advances two claims, both of which he takes to be empirically grounded: 1) The diaspora was, before Israeli statehood, mixed bag in respect to its impact on the formation of Jewish Culture, and the notion that it was a virtual eternity of destitution, homelessness, and exclusion (123) is myth perpetuated by and appropriated to the use of Israeli propaganda; and, 2) The denomination Judeo-Christian refers to clear and distinct historical agent, and this agent, in collaboration with European colonizing powers, is, in fact, responsible for bringing about the modem Israeli state. Mr. Gover is right, of course, in assuming that I have opinions on the quality of the diaspora as shaping force in Jewish culture and on the concrete fortunes and misfortunes along the road to Israeli statehood. But he is wrong in thinking that my failure to discuss them conceals something insidious (125) in my argument. If he had read my essay, Gover would understand that my comments are not offered, as he represents them, In regard solely to (124) but quite precisely in regard to the language of specified debate, as it takes place in American academic journals. Gover has every right to feel that the plight of the disenfranchised Palestinian is more urgent than the subject I chose to discuss. Let him accuse of me of frivolity if he does. But does he really mean to deny that this debate is historical fact and that these events in discourse, taking place here, where I live and work, are not, in their humble way, part of history? If he does, it is hard to see how the same would not be true of the essays by Gates, Baker, and Said that I criticized, or to understand why he would take time and energy from his supra-linguistic activism to trifle with them or with me. Said's article, which Gover seems at his greatest pains to affirm (though not to defend), is about the representation of Palestinians in the works of American Jewish academics and intellectuals. My essay is about the representation of Jews in some 165