▆ THIS VOLUME, and the series of which it is a part, centrally places culture in an investigation of the social identities and textual expressions that are labelled Jewish. In an objective voice, the contents might broadly be called studies of Jewish culture, except that the essays present concepts swirling about the label of Jewish that are not lodged in the practices of Jews. The additional position, which might be called subjective in the sense of pertaining to attitudes, perceptions, and biases, considers the meaning of Jewishness as an idea, or a way of thinking, in different cultures, even those devoid of Jews. It not only includes the prejudices or affections of non-Jews, but also representations by Jews themselves, some of which may indeed be outside their awareness. Such representations are important in the consideration of how Jews view and differentiate themselves among other Jews, as well as the way they distinguish and align their cultural profiles to non-Jewish others. If studies of Jewish culture consider what Jews do, then the overarching concept of Jewish cultural studies takes in what is thought by and about Jews—and the idea of Jewishness in words, images, and things. The connection between the objective and subjective views is the quest for the meaning of being Jewish or representing ‘Jewishness’. A way to fuse the standpoints into a conceptual whole is for scholars to refer to the cultural—those matters related to culture.

The volume proposes that the idea of Jewishness, or what people think of as Jewish, which may be distinct from the Jew or the things made by Jews, is revealed in the expressions of culture—speech, folklore, literature, art, architecture, music, dance, ritual, film, theatre, and so on. As contributors to cultural studies, the authors expand the scope of culturally related matters from the conventional artistic questions to their social relevance in politics, health, and economics. An implication of using ‘cultural’ as a keyword, therefore, is to declare that culture is not only to be studied for the sake of aesthetic appreciation but is also to be viewed as crucial to issues faced by societies and the individuals that compose them. Unlike many studies of culture that stop at the identification of the expressions of culture, the cultural studies here seek to interpret their meanings.