Leo Strauss has since the 1950s been a key figure among American conservatives interested in political philosophy, and attention to him has in recent years intensified as “East Coast” and “West Coast” Straussians contest whether the American “regime” is “low but solid” — about the best that can be expected since the break with classical natural right that Machiavelli and Hobbes spearheaded — or, on the contrary, a revival if not improvement on the wisdom of the ancients. The break between classical and modern natural right is not, though, the only polarity that concerned Strauss. He also wrote about a split between Athens and Jerusalem, and it is an aspect of his work in Jewish thought that forms the central topic of Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai.
