Contrary to the biblical depiction of divorce, tractate Gittin is predominated by cases of deferral and mediacy, such as bizarre cases of flinging the get from afar. I shall argue that the emblem of writing in the biblical picture brought the Talmudic sages to establish the diff erance as a vital factor in the act of divorce. I shall particularly analyze the problem of the flung get, showing that the bill which the woman receives is not the one which the husband bestows. I shall compare this discontinuity with Derrida's dialectics of the gift and mechanism of supplementarity, showing how it renders the get generative of the ethical and ontological framework upon which it is conferred, rather than a prop in a preestablished one. Correspondingly, the get is 'affirmed'-in Derrida's and Nietzsche's sense-rendering divorce a positive type of relationship rather than a fall away from an ideal. THE BIBLICAL AND TALMUDIC 'PICTURES' OF DIVORCE A striking difference in spirit lies between the biblical and Talmudic 'picture' of divorce. 1 The depiction in Deuteronomy 24 is apparently one of presence and immediacy: When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a book of divorce and put it in her hand and sends her out of his house [Deut. 24:1] The husband personally writes the 'book of divorce'. He then faces his wife and confers the get directly into her hand. Some of this ideal indeed bears expression in the rabbinic halacha, as the get, the bill of divorce, should be written ad hominem, a pre-prepared form is not allowed. Contrary to the bible, however, the predominating picture in tractate Gittin is of mediation, deferral and absence. It opens outright with an abnormal case: A husband who lives in the 'province of the sea', beyond the Land of Israel, and who confers a get into the hands of a messenger for his wife living in the Land of Israel. As against the straightforwardly intentional husband in the bible, the fourth chapter of Gittin discusses a perplexingly ambiguous one who sends a messenger, regrets, and sends another messenger to abrogate the first one. In its sixth chapter, the tractate discusses messengers of messengers. In its seventh, it discusses cases of gets with circuitous conditional clauses. In its eighth, bizarre ways of handing a get to the wife, such as tricking her into believing it was something else, or flinging it into her yard or balcony from afar. It is only towards the end that the tractate discusses the fundaments: the legitimate reasons to divorce a wife, and-through aggadot-the metaphysical meaning of divorce. To compare, its sister tractate, Kidushin (betrothals) opens at the beginning, the three ways to betroth a woman: by intercourse, by lending her money and declaring her to be acquired, or by V C 2017 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered.