Devotes a chapter each to selected catastrophic events and the literary response to them, such as the destruction of the First Temple in 587 B.C.E. and the resulting biblical literature, and the massacre of the Rhineland Jewish communities by the Crusades in 1096 and synagogue poetry. These earlier responses are then compared to the treatment of the Holocaust in Hebrew literature with special attention given to the works of Uri Zvi Greenburg and Aharon Appelfeld. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.