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IV Reorientation (1928-32) The late twenties and early thirties were for Strauss a time ofreorientation . The rethinking ofhis positions is evident in his letters and in publications of the mid-1930s, especially in the introduction to Philosophy and LAw (1935). In the few writings he published at the time, however, he only hints at some of the concerns he expressed more freely in lectures to learned audiences at the Lehranstalt fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums and to the Zionist youths he continued to address on occasion . The notable exception is the 1928 review of Freud's Future ofan fllusion. Published in Derjiidische Student, the widely disseminated publication ofthe Zionist students' organization KartelljiidischerVerbindungen (K.J.V.), the essay presents an argument for a radically atheistic conception of political Zionism, a position that, to the majority of Strauss's readers, was as unacceptable on principle as on pragmatic considerations. In the second halfofthe 1920s, German Zionism had largely outgrown the theoretical and diasporatic orientation of the youth movement and had turned "Palestinocentric" instead (see Lavsky, Before Catastrophe, cited here in the introduction). The shared pragmatic goals ofincreasing and supporting theJewish colonization ofPalestine brought with it a careful avoidance ofideological conflict between the left-wing Hapoel Hatzair and the organization of religious Zionism, Mizrahi. Strauss's argument violated this tacit agreement. The strongly negative response to it had the effect ofending his career as a political theorist ofZionism. Zionism had changed, and the radical honesty ofthe youth movement was out. Strauss was not immediately deterred. Over the course of the next few years Zionist youth groups still provided the setting for some ofhis unpublished ruminations on the "religious situation of the present" and similar themes, yet these ruminations were increasingly less straightforward , more ironic and double-edged, and ever more self-conscious in 201 202 Chapter 4 style. Rereading Lessing, Strauss became mindful ofthe exoteric character ofall theological-political writing, and he began to practice it himself But this somewhat playful writing soon gave way to the earnest and open recognition of his disenchantment with Zionism as the ultimate resolution to theJewish problem caused by the dissolution ofthe ghetto, the onlyJewish problem he was truly interested in. He had turned from practical involvement in a political movement to the theoretical examination of premodern political philosophy and its implications for modernman . Sigmund Freud, The Future ofan Rlusion (1928) The following remarks are meant as a call to develop the Zionist ideology in a direction in which it is not commonly developed. They follow The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud, which appeared a year ago.1 They do so neither in order to cloak themselves in the authority of a man of European fame (no authorities exist in the field in which they move), nor because what they imply could not have been known without Freud. Rather, they do so merely because the clarity and simplicity ofthe Freudian manner ofspeaking (a clarity and simplicity not very common in Germany) help to prevent beating around the bush on the essential questions. To be sure, such clarity and simplicity are also a great danger; they fool readers used to different manners ofspeaking into ignoring the substance ofthe Freudian expositions, including their questionable substance. Even readers who are merely familiar with the way in which the question ofreligion is customarily dealt with at German universities could easily dismiss the work to which we refer as superficial. Whoever is satisfied with such criticism has understood nothing ofthe question that guides Freud. Political Zionism has repeatedly characterized itselfas the will to normalize the existence of the Jewish people, to normalize the Jewish people. By this self-definition it has exposed itselfto a grave misunderstanding, namely, the misunderstanding that the will to normality was thefirst word ofpolitical Zionism; the most effective criticism ofpolitical Zionism rests on this misunderstanding . In truth, the presupposition ofthe Zionist will to normalization, that is, of the Zionist negation ofgalut (exile), is the conviction that "the power ofreligion has been broken" (Klatzkin, Krisis und Entscheidung, p. 57).2 Because the break with religion has been resolutely effected by many individualJews , and only because ofthis reason, it is possible for these individuals to raise the question on behalf of their people, how the people is to live from now on.3 Not that they prostrate themselves before the idol ofnormality; on Reorientation (1928-32) 203 the contrary: they no longer see any reason for the lack ofnormality [Nichtnonnalitiit ]. And this is decisive: in the age...

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