perfect Jewish life. This concept played a major role in the thought systems of R. Ezra ben Solomon(thirteenth century) and Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291), but not of all mystics. Individuals did not hesitate to move back to the Diaspora for various reasons, and aliyah was not part of all systems.
The halakhists of Safed made an effort in the sixteenth century to reconstitute the Sanhedrin and to reestablish rabbinic ordination. This was intended to help solve a variety of halakhic problems that needed legislation rather than interpretation. It may also have represented an effort to affirm the primacy of the Land of Israel. In any case it aroused much objection, and the effort was speedily abandoned.
THE REFORM MOVEMENT
The nineteenth century brought dreams of emancipation accompanied by a reexamination of our relation to the Land of Israel. Jews fought for the rights of citizenship. Scholars emphasized the universalism of Judaism and the“mission of Israel, ” so they gave the Diaspora an active and more positive role than they had in the past. They minimized or rejected ties to the Land, in which very few Jews actually lived. They rarely expressed this in a halakhic form,*® but usually in theological or polemic writings and most clearly in liturgical changes. One finds almost no discussion of major issues surrounding Israel in Reform responsa except those published in the last decades in Israel . Some Reform leaders changed their attitude toward Israel within a decade of the Pittsburgh Platform and were among the earliest religious Zionists . The entire movement took a positive stand toward Zionism from 1935 onward. After the establishment of Israel , the headquarters of the
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