center of the diaspora, the massive later rabbinic literature, extending over a period of some one thousand years, was produced in widely scattered places—North Africa, Spain, Germany, France, the Land of Israel, Poland, Turkey, Italy, and elsewhere. In all of these periods, Jewish law lived, grew, and developed. A crucial change in the history of Jewish law was brought about by the decisive transformation of Jewish society—and concurrently, of Jewish law and its juridical authority—with the advent