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The first phase of the history of the Diaspora ends with the Crusades. Not only did this movement as such, together with its political and economic consequences, have a catastrophic effect on the life of the Jewish people and its status in all the lands of the Dispersion, but it also brought about profound changes in Palestine itself. Even after the predominantly Jewish character of Palestine had become a thing of the past, the country had still continued to have a sizable Jewish population and the physical connection between the people and its land had remained unbroken. The Jews were at no time a nation without a country, but rather, even in the Exile, a nation which had been dispossessed of its soil by force and which had never ceased to protest against this act of political robbery and to demand the return of its stolen property. Throughout the long generations of the Dispersion every Jew firmly believed that "the Land is Israel's everlasting possession, which only they shall inherit and in which only they shall settle, and if perchance they are exiled from it they will return to it again, for it is theirs in perpetuity and no other nation's."

This was not merely an ideological slogan, nor the messianic dream of unworldly visionaries, but a vividly felt and living attachment which found expression in deeds no less than in words. Every critical juncture in the history of Palestine from the Arab conquest down to our own times -- starting with the civil war during the decline of the Umayyad dynasty (744-750) and ending with Mehmet Ali's conquest and his granting of concessions to foreign powers ( 1832-1842) -- set off a wave of immigration amongst the Jewish masses to the Land of Israel.

However, despite this strong ideological attachment to Palestine, which in some measure found expression in Jewish customs and beliefs, the daily life of Diaspora Jewry was determined by entirely different factors. The Jews were obliged to come to terms with reality. They did not merely take up residence in other countries, but became firmly established in them, conforming to their way of life, taking root in their soil and adopting their culture, in accordance with the different conditions in each particular case. Nor were all these "passive" processes which took place automatically "through the force of circumstances." On the contrary, every such act of taking root in the countries of the Dispersion and of self-adaptation to their customs and cultures was achieved only after a hard struggle which had to be waged not only with the authorities and native populations of the countries in which the Jews had managed to obtain a foothold, but also against the inner Jewish feeling of "otherness" with regard to "foreign lands."

The success of this struggle was obviously bound to weaken the link between the nation and its own land. Evidence of this can be found in Jehudah Halevi's wellknown admission, in his Cuzari, that the repetition by the Jews of his time of such expressions as "Bow down to His holy mountain," "Bow down to His footstool" and "Who restoreth His Presence to Zion" and the like are "mere twittering, since we do not think about what is said in these and other passages." . . .

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