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We talk about Jewish literature, music, and art—but can a book, or a song, or a painting be Jewish? We will examine the premises of this question and the many answers that have been formulated in response to it focusing on modern European (and some American) culture. Jewishness as it relates to human identity has been conceived of as related to religion, ethnicity, race, nation, language, geography, and politics. But these keywords have also been used to engage with the question of the Jewish identity not of a person, but of a cultural product. To understand the implications of calling, say, a book Jewish, we will examine the history of the concept of culture and its emergence in the context of the formation of modern Jewish identity. We will examine theoretical and literary texts originally written in German, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, as well as painting, photography, film, and architecture from Europe, Israel and the Americas. We will aim to arrive at an understanding of the ways that the idea of culture intersects with the formation of Jewish identity in modernity. All readings will be in English.