The Explosion of Jewish Culture in an Age of Mass Media By Deborah Dash Moore Co-Editor, Volume X The Posen Library of Culture and Civilization   In an era of rapid media expansion, when the concepts of “culture” and “Jewish” are both routinely challenged, it can be hard to decide what to include--and exclude--from an anthology of contemporary Jewish culture. Take the question of food. Yes, there are laws of kashrut to observe, but, as Mathew Goodman notes, if we were to limit ourselves to foods produced by Jews throughout history “the menu would be a very short one indeed, scarcely sufficient for a single meal.” So, what happens if we “head in the opposite direction and declare Jewish food simply to be ‘food made by Jews’?" Goodman rejects that alternative as well: it would be too broad (it would include, after all, all those attracted to bacon and other pork products as a compulsive counterprejudice). Where does that leave us? These were the types of riddles that Nurith Gertz and I wrestled with as editors of Volume X of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. What lessons did we take from contemplating food? To avoid seeking Jewish essences or even internal similarities; to steer clear of Jewish religious prescriptions as sufficient explanations for culture; to resist accepting everything Jews do as part of Jewish culture; to reject style as an adequate alternative for cultural distinctiveness; and to not worry if much of what Jews produce resembles what non-Jews are also creating. Instead, we should pay attention to history and memory, to changing contexts and responses, as we try to identify Jewish cultural expressions in diverse new media. Yet even with these guidelines, it is no easy task to decide what to include and what to exclude. Bringing to our discussions perspectives shaped by our different disciplines and geographies, we eventually agreed to contend that Jews make culture and make it Jewish in various ways. Our list includes language, production, references, reception, uses, debates, and performances. Such a relatively long list allowed us to pay attention to contexts and responses, history and memory, as well as more formalist dimensions of culture. We saw that the intersection of these features of language and references, uses and reception, performance and production, transformed cultural production by Jews into Jewish culture. We had to pay attention not only to the works themselves but also to the ways people, especially Jews, responded to these works. We ended up with an anthology reflecting a broad understanding of culture that included high and low, elite and popular, folk and mass. Undoubtedly, we have missed many possibilities and another two editors would have made different choices. We do not shrink, however, from our commitment to feminism and desire to include women as well as men in our anthology. In addition, various exigencies that come from dealing either with living artists or recalcitrant estates will also shape the final product. (Not everyone, as one might imagine, wants to be included in a volume on Jewish civilization and culture.) Our composite portrait of Jewish culture in the last decades of the twentieth and the first years of the twenty-first century suggests its mutability, exuberance, diversity, and vigor. It situates Jewish cultural creativity during years of upheaval in Israel, Latin America, South Africa, and the Soviet Union, and years of relative stability in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia. The dilemma of our contemporary period--that many works of Jewish culture bear few distinguishing Jewish marks--reflects an absence of consensus as well as the eclectic character of Jewish culture today and its interpenetration with many other cultures. Thus the anthology seeks less to define what is Jewish than to suggest the breadth and depth of Jewish culture in the contemporary world. This means that when a well-known author or artist who might be considered nominally Jewish in terms of personal involvement engages cultural questions of concern to other Jews, he or she helps to make that culture by participating in these debates, even if such authors and artists usually ignore Jewish topics. So where did we end up? We took a number of well-established genres, such as that of literature, and expanded them. We recognized the explosion of titles in children's literature in this period and its growing significance as a means of transmitting and transforming Jewish culture. We also took cognizance of the flourishing of memoir writing among Jews. The first-person-singular account has occupied increasing space in Jewish cultural imagination, whether written by relatively unknown individuals or by famous men and women. In part this reflected the rise of feminism and its attitudes toward the personal; in part it demonstrated how much Jews were influenced by trends sweeping through contemporary Western culture; and in part it responded to the growth of social history and interest in experiences of ordinary women and men, a trend abetted by technology (tape recorders) and oral history interviews. Themes treated by Jews reached audiences of Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish culture has flourished in many expressive forms during the last decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century. Multiple perspectives coexist within the different languages of Jewish culture, especially Hebrew and English. Some would contend that contemporary Jewish culture is rebellious and internally confrontational. Many works bear few distinguishing Jewish marks because Jews have often contributed as individuals to the cultures and societies of which they are a part. Instead, these universal works participate in a type of dialogue with more explicit Jewish texts, sometimes sharing common sensibilities and tensions, and other times standing in opposition. In an era of crossover, of mixing of styles and genres, of blending secular and sacred, popular and profound, elite and commercial, personal and political, the opportunities for Jewish expression have arguably never been greater. Moreover, the corresponding expansion of genres of Jewish creativity signify an increasing blossoming of a democratic Jewish culture, responsive to the religious, social, or political life of the past.  The Explosion of Jewish Culture in an Age of Mass Media is adapted from a paper of the same name, originally presented by the author at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem in August 2009. It was adapted with permission of the author. Deborah Dash Moore is Professor of History at the University of Michigan and Director of the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. An historian of American Jews, she focuses on the twentieth-century experience. She is the author of a trilogy titled At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (1981); GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (2004); and To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. (1994). Together with Paula Hyman she edited(1997).