The Ouroboros: Leo Strauss's Critique of Zionism

Abstract:In several lectures and essays in the 1950s and 1960s, Leo Strauss offered a succinct critique of Zionism: that despite its ostensible rejection of religious authority, political Zionism would ultimately slide into religious Zionism, which would in turn negate the aims of Zionism itself. In this essay, I argue that this analysis is not only surprisingly prescient but is much more central to Strauss's mature thought than generally recognized. In this, I agree with scholars who have suggested that Strauss's engagement with Zionism as a young man in Germany in the 1920s was formative for the development of his mature accounts of both politics and Judaism. Yet in contrast to existing scholarship, I argue that Strauss grew increasingly critical of Zionism as he concluded that the Zionist rejection of religious authority amounted ultimately to a rejection of morality. In this, Zionism reflected in the most blatant form the failure endemic to modern politics. I suggest that this point provides the hinge between Strauss's early Zionism, his mature critique of modern politics, and his account of Judaism's political power. The force of the critique also, counterintuitively, helps explain Strauss's lifelong attachment to Zionism. Strauss, I argue, remained committed to Zionism not despite but because it was destined to fail. I suggest that Strauss's analysis remains provocative and relevant, particularly for those who might disagree with his conclusions.