C. Cordoni (ÖAW/Univ. Vienna): The Land of the future and the future of the homeland

Among the ethnonational and/or religious symbols said to hold a diaspora together are the narratives of the homeland. In fact, for a community to qualify as a diaspora, William Safran argued, it must satisfy a number of seven criteria said to be based on the paradigmatic Jewish diaspora. In the description of six of these criteria the homeland of dispersed communities is mentioned. One in particular stresses the fact that diasporas think of their homeland as “the place to which they or their descendants would (or should) eventually return—if and when conditions are appropriate.” In this paper I will discuss a few text passages to illustrate how the sages and other Jewish authors who made use of rabbinic and other materials imagined the homeland of the future to which Jews of the early Middle Ages looked forward to return.