Revolutionary Hebrew, Empire and Crisis

Hebrew has unique sociological interest as the oldest, in some ways most successful minority literature. There are salient patterns in its development prior to 1948. Most of its major periods of artistic growth occurred under the rule of powerful empires with leading cultures. These include the empires of ancient Mesopotamia, Rome, medieval Islam and Tsarist Russia, whose cultures were highly attractive to substantial numbers of Jews. Imperial crisis in each empire appears to have arrested the process of assimilation. Social instability brought violence against the Jews and caused major upheavals in Jewish demography as well as a psychological turn inward, away from the dominant culture. The result in each case was a revolutionary body of Hebrew literature, influenced decisively by the dominant culture, but asserting Jewish separatism and, to varying degrees, nationalism

Ancient history · Empire · Epistemology · Gestalt psychology · Hebrew · Political science · Sociology · Classics · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Philosophy

• Biblical Genealogy and Nationalism

  Open Access•David Aberbach•Genealogy•2023

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• Hebrew Literature and Jewish Nationalism in the Tsarist Empire 1881–1917

  Open Access•David Aberbach•Nations and Nationalism•1997

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