Jerusalem and Athens: Reason and Revelation in the Works of Leo Strauss (review)

152 SHOFAR Winter 1997 Vol. 15, No.2 resolved or clarified in this work, much of it is not. Certainly, many of the resolutions lie beyond the scope of this work. One glaring omission, however, was any reference to the influence ofPaula Winkler, the Bavarian Catholic writer whom Buber met, courted, and married during this period of his life. She was to be his lifetime companion, the central relationship of his life, yet her name is mentioned just twice, and nothing is said about the impact, or lack of it, that she had on these formative years of Buber's intellectual vision. Thus I am not sure Schmidt adds all that much to the understanding of Buber derived from the recent works of Friedman, Mendes-Flohr, Silberstein, and Kepnes, to mention a few of the major authors whose writings on Buber have appeared in the last dozen years or so. Donald]. Moore, S.]. Department of Theology Fordham University Jerusalem and Athens: Reason and Revelation in the Works of Leo Strauss, by Susan Orr. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995. 245 pp. $24.95. Although Leo Strauss is primarily known as an interpreter of some of the major thinkers of the Western political tradition, he is also considered, quite properly, to be a contributor to Jewish thought. Harold Bloom, the literary critic from Yale University, put it best when he referred to Strauss as "political philosopher and Hebraic sage." Susan Orr has written a book which attempts, quite successfully, to demonstrate that justice and righteousness were at the, very core of his ultimate concern and that Judaism was central to his whole philosophical project. Orr simply lays to rest the view in some Straussian quarters that Strauss's Jewish thought was simply an expression of very personal concerns rather than of genuinely philosophical interest.. Orr claims that the tension between reason and revelation is Strauss's primary concern. She does this by giving us a superbly nuanced discussion of his philosophic way of reading. In her own close reading of Strauss's great essay, "Jerusalem and Athens," she raises serious questions about the claim that Strauss teaches the moral equivalence of Zeus and Yahweh. Orr shows that Strauss learned from Socrates that political things are the key to the understanding of all things. She also shows that Strauss was drawn to medieval Islamic and Jewish rationalism with revelation offered at its Book Reviews 153 highest point-a worthy rival of philosophy. He took the quarrel between . reason and revelation most seriously. Orr's penetrating analysis of the essay "Jerusalem and Athens" provides an excellent example of Strauss's philosophic way of reading the author of Genesis and the prophets on the one hand and on the other the poets and the philosophers, particularly Hesiod and Socrates. By applying Strauss's hermeneutics, she shows that many of the great concerns of political philosophy-the human place in the universe, the need for politics, the thirst for justice, the confrontation with evil-all hinge on whether reason (Socrates) or revelation (Yahweh) is the ultimate guide for humanity. Orr's commentary on Strauss makes the fundamental point that the moderns were incorrect in their simple denigration of the sacred and that Strauss tips the scales a bit toward Jerusalem by coming to the "exigetical defense ... ofthe God ofAbraham, Isaac and Jacob." Orr offers a strong challenge to those Straussians who present him as the cautious nihilist rather than the reluctant believer. She shows that Strauss also keeps the philosopher as the one who is searching in order to preserve the possibility offaith. Reason and revelation are alternatives, they are beyond synthesis, yet each alternative .remains attractive. Indeed Orr's lucid, careful, scholarly, and engaging book. reveals that Strauss never allows Athens to triumph over Jerusalem. The book reprints "Jerusalem and Athens" as well as Strauss's "On the Interpretation of Genesis," an essay which has previously been difficult to find until the publication of this book. Kenneth L. Deutsch Department of Political Science State University of New York at Geneseo Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women, by Paula E. Hyman. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995. 197...