Analyzes modern Jewry's engagement with the arts as a whole, including music, theater, dance, film, museums, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more. The book asks the following questions: What roles have commerce and politics played in shaping Jewish artistic agendas? And, who determines the Jewishness of art and for what purposes?

This richly illustrated volume illuminates how the arts have helped Jews confront the various challenges of modernity, including cultural adaptation and self-preservation, economic diversification, and ritual transformation. There truly is an art to being Jewish in the modern world - or, alternatively, an art to being modern in the Jewish world - and this collection fully captures its range, diversity, and historical significance.

List of IllustrationsPreface--David RudermanIntroduction--Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan KarpI. CULTURE, COMMERCE, AND CLASS1. Theater as Educational Institution: Jewish Immigrant Intellectuals and Yiddish Theater Reform--Nina Warnke2. Film and Vaudeville on New York's Lower East Side--Judith Thissen3. Of Maestros and Minstrels: American Jewish Composers between Black Vernacular and European Art Music--Jonathan KarpII. SITING THE JEWISH TOMORROW4. May Day, Tractors, and Piglets: Yiddish Songs for Little Communists--Anna Shternshis5. Performing the State: The Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the New York World's Fair, 1939/40--Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett6. Was There Anything Particularly Jewish about "The First Hebrew City"?--Anat Helman7. Re-Routing Roots: Zehava Ben's Journey between Shuk and Suk--Amy HorowitzIII. LOST IN PLACE8. The "Wandering Jew" from Medieval Legend to Modern Metaphor--Richard I. Cohen9. Diasporic Values in Contemporary Art: Kitaj, Katchor, Frenkel--Carol ZemelIV. PORTRAITS OF THE ARTIST AS JEW10. Modern? American? Jew? Museums and Exhibitions of Ben Shahn's Late Paintings--Diana L. Linden11. Max Liebermann and the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter--Walter Cahn12. Rome and Jerusalem: The Figure of Jesus in the Creation of Mark Antokol'skii--Olga LitvakV. IN SEARCH OF A USABLE AESTHETIC13. A Modern Mitzvah-Space-Aesthetic: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig--Zachary Braiterman14. Reestablishing a "Jewish Spirit" in American Synagogue Music: The Music of A. W. Binder--Mark Kligman15. The Evolution of Philadelphia's Russian Sher Medley--Hankus NetskyVI. HOTEL TERMINUS16. Framing Nazi Art Loot--Charles Dellheim17. Joseph Lewitan and the Nazification of Dance in Germany--Marion Kant18. History, Memory, and Moral Judgment in Documentary Film: On Marcel Ophuls's Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie--Susan Rubin SuleimanNotesNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgments