ABSTRACT
The problem of reconciling the traditional devotion to the Land of Israel with the realities of Jewish life in the Diaspora became ever more troublesome during the Middle Ages. This was especially the case after the rise of Islam and the subsequent Muslim conquest of the entire Middle East, making the prospect of a Jewish national restoration in the Land appear increasingly less likely at any time in the foreseeable future. Under the authority and influence of the gaonate, rabbinic law and lore began to undergo a renaissance of exposition and development, thereby reaffirming the importance of the Diaspora community as the effective religious and cultural locus of Jewish existence. The Diaspora, because it was regarded as the main arena in which the forces of evil are at work, was to become, even more than the Land of Israel, the battleground for the confrontation between the kabbalists and the sitra aharah.
