Political Thought Education in the Light of Leo Strauss’s Theology: Preliminary Lines
Rabbi Haim Rechnitzer, Ph.D., Professor of Jewish Thought
This article examines the contemporary intellectual and moral crisis exposed in Western and Israeli academia in the aftermath of October 7, situating it within the broader trajectory of modern Enlightenment and its postmodern aftermath. Drawing on Leo Strauss’s critique of modern rationalism, historicism, and value-neutral social science, it argues that the eclipse of classical political philosophy has weakened the capacity for normative judgment and civic responsibility. The essay reconstructs Strauss’s recovery of the enduring tension between “Jerusalem” and “Athens,” understood as the theological–political problem, and presents classical liberal education as a central remedy to nihilism. It concludes by proposing a renewed political theology, inspired by medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy, as a liberal-democratic framework for Israel that integrates revelation and reason without collapsing into either fundamentalism or relativism.