Michael Zank has selected, edited and translated essays by Leo Strauss that originally appeared for the most part in German Jewish journals associated with Jewish studies, particularly journals focused on the problems of Zionism. Strauss, then in his 20's, was determined to approach these controversies and scholarly disputes from a critical perspective. It's not that he stayed above the fray as he ultimately came down on the side of "political Zionism" as opposed to the middle ground of "cultural Zionism". But he subjected friend and foe to a critical examination based on reason and finally prescribed a frankly, atheistic political Zionism liberated from the Jewish faith. He engaged in posthumous controversy over Hermann Cohen's treatment of Spinoza which led to a deeper study of Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise and its relation to his Ethics. This study culminated in Strauss's 'Spinoza's Critique of Religion", originally published in 1930, comprised of writings produced during the period 1925-28, including several selections in the volume edited by Zank.

Following the arguments of these texts is challenging, especially to any reader who is not at home with a solid foundation in the the Torah, Talmud, the history of Zionism in Germany and the major thinkers and scholars who immediately preceded Strauss or were his contemporaries. By the beginning of the 1930s Strauss had begun a reorientation that led him to the study of the medieval political philosophers on the way back to the level of the natural obstacles to philosophy that formed the original metaphor of the cave described by Socrates in Plato's Republic. That reorientation begins with his work on Spinoza. ( )