Judaism Mediated

Learning About Jewishness Through the Cultural Arts

Laura Yares, Sharon Avni

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781479838561
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479838578
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology
• Index: Social Sciences

Explores how Jews and non-Jews come to learn about Jews and Judaism through leisure-time entertainment

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

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Introduction: Learning About Jews and Judaism in Leisure Time
• 1. Ancestral Connections: Generational Dimensions of Learning at the National Museum of American Jewish History
• 2. Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?: Social Learning, Social Media, and Saturday Night Seder
• 3. Let’s Talk About Television: Learning in the Online Communities of Shtisel Digital Fandom
• 4. Sing a Song of Sepharad: Ladino Music and the Ecologies of Learning About Jewish Cultural Diversity
• 5. The Show Must Go On: Learning, Memory, and Jewish Precarity at Leopoldstadt and Parade
• Conclusion: Learning, the Jewish Cultural Landscape, and the Social Spaces of Contemporary American Religion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors