Until 1948, Hebrew literature was created mostly under the rule of empires, notably those of ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, medieval Islam, and Tsarist Russia. Aberbach argues in this controversial book that several of the most original periods in the history of Hebrew coincided with - and resulted partly from - imperial crisis, involving violence against the Jews and radical shifts in Jewish demography and in the global balance of power. Jewish assimilation in the cultures of the empires was arrested, causing a psychological turn inward and the creation of revolutionary Hebrew literature.