 For this and other reasons, the all-important question of the priority of responsibility as against justice must be approached as a complex one, in part dependent on lived circumstances. From the “metaphysical” perspective that Levinas defined as desire for the other in Totality and Infinity (TI: 39), responsibility and proximity come first (EN: 107–108). From the perspective of practice and our living-in-society, justice stands closer to ethics and may sometimes precede it. Gérard Bensussan has pondered this question in light of the Christian tradition in the West, for which Judaism already represents an alterity—in text and in act; for example, when the Passover seder re-enacts the escape from enslavement in Egypt, it ritually recalls: “strangers we were, and thus, strangers we are”, even now (Bensussan 2008: 78). A more rigorously philosophical reckoning may require that the relationship between the two perspectives, justice and mercy, be further clarified. Be that as it may, this is one point on which the Jewish writings of Levinas enrich, even ground, his philosophical arguments.