The Ashkenazi Revolution

66Massada Encyclopedia, volume 2, page 103). This struggle over thebirthright, which reminds us of the struggle between Judah and the tribes ofour matriarch Rachel, continued some 900 years, until the end of the era ofthe Crusades, when the hand of Babylon prevailed and she took for herselfmore and more of the authority of the Land of Israel and became the greaterof the two Jewish nations. One of the more famous episodes in thisstruggle of hegemony was:The dispute that erupted between Rav Saadya, the gaon of Sura, and R.Aharon ben Meir, head of the scholarly society of the Land of Israel, in thematter of leap years and the fixing of holidays, which was previously therecognized privilege of the Land of Israel – a privilege that was absentfrom Babylon. This attempt, by Ben Meir, to reclaim the authority for thesages of the Land of Israel, was not successful (the Hebrew Encyclopedia,volume on the Land of Israel, page 452).From the time the princehood was nullified in the Land of Israel, in theyear 425 or 415, Babylon rushed to take the religious-rabbinical privilegesof this office for itself. The conditions for the existence of a noteworthyJewish settlement in the Land of Israel, in the days of the Arab conquest,were not bad. However, the bitter competition of Babylon sapped thestrength of the settlement in the Land of Israel in every sense, botheconomically and spiritually.2The famous theory of the historian Dubnov, on the existence of centers inthe Jewish Diaspora, that sink and rise in turn, to our dismay has noscientific basis. It was not “centers” that came into being in the Diaspora,but tribes-peoples that were bound by ties of a confederacy and partook, atthe same time, in wars of bitter competition for hegemony; tribes-peoplesthat are direct descendants of their predecessors during the First Temple.The Jewish settlement in Babylon was not a center but a people. It had along and glorious history, political, religious and even military. Within itexisted a Jewish state founded by the brothers Hanilai and Hasinai. It