Jewish Learning Through the Cultural Arts
What happens when Jewishly-identified visitors participate in Jewish cultural arts experiences? What do they learn about themselves, and about Judaism as a communal experience? How are they changed by what they see, touch, hear or taste?
Photo Credit: G. Widman/Visit Philadelphia
This project focused on the distinctive forms of Jewish learning that can occur when individuals and groups experience the cultural arts. Learning in cultural arts contexts is a broad field of inquiry, inclusive of both content transmission (learning new information), as well as affective learning about self, identity and community. Focused on adult learners, this project utilized ethnographic research methods — including interviews, observational and digital fieldwork, audio diaries, and content analysis — to explore how learning about Judaism happens outside of formal classroom settings and during leisure time.
The project sought to explore learning experiences across five sites. In 2019 research began with a study of 30 young adult visitors to the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It continued with the creation and reception of Saturday Night Seder (an online fundraiser and communal celebration of the Passover holiday), a popular Facebook site for fans of the Israeli television series Shtisel. Additional sites included Sephardic/Mizrachi music and visual arts creative experiences.
About the Book
Judaism Mediated explores how Jews and non-Jews learn about Judaism through participation in cultural, digital, and leisurely spaces. Most work on religious education has focused on institutional learning, like religious classrooms and houses of worship, or on the transmission of religious values at home. And most studies focus on youth and how they become socialized into their religious traditions. But, looking specifically at Judaism, Judaism Mediated argues that this focus overlooks how engagement with the arts, such as theatre or museums or music, influences how adults learn about religion.Laura Yares and Sharon Avni examine audience engagements with five different Jewish cultural arts settings–museums, web-based performances, streaming television, concerts, and live theatre. They show that depictions of Jewish people and topics in these cultural spaces can create powerful learning experiences. However, learning about Judaism through the arts can also be mis-educative, reinforcing stereotypes or creating misunderstandings.
At its core, this book makes the case that adult audiences learn about Judaism and Jewishness in significant ways when they experience Jewish culture, and that we need to expand our understanding of where and how religious education happens. The volume shows not only that religious learning happens in diverse spaces, but that learning in leisure time can take on social, cognitive, and affective dimensions, too. Judaism Mediated offers compelling case studies of contemporary American religion relevant for readers interested in how people enact religion in everyday life.
Related Events
November 11, 2021
What happens when young adults visit a Jewish museum? What do they learn about Jews and Judaism, and how are they changed by what they see, touch, hear and feel? In this talk, Laura Yares discusses findings from a study of 30 young adult visitors to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and describes the rich learning that can occur in episodic, leisure time Jewish educational settings.
Publications
- Yares, L., & Avni, S. (2026). Judaism Mediated: Learning About Jewishness Through the Cultural Arts. NYU Press.
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Yares, L. (2022). “The Material Inventories of Millennial Jewish Lives: Affective Learning and Jewish Consumer Culture at the National Museum of American Jewish History Gift Shop,” Material Religion, 18(2), 161-181.
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Yares, L., & Avni, S. (2021). “'Saturday Night Seder' and the Affordances of Cultural Arts during COVID-19,” Contemporary Jewry, 41, 3–22.
Related Public Scholarship
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For Theatergoers at Broadway’s Recent Spate of Jewish Shows, Attendance is a Form of Witness, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 13, 2023.
- Shtisel – Let’s Talk About It, University of Kentucky Arts & Sciences webinar, November 18, 2021.
- Jewish Learning Through the Cultural Arts, Tulane University Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience, September 29, 2021.
- Shtisel: How a TV Show on a Haredi Family has Enthralled Jews and non-Jews, The Jerusalem Post, April 15, 2021.
- Television: Let's Talk About It, reflection blog in Digital Fieldwork, June 18, 2021.