I have read that until the emancipation of the European Jews in the early- to mid-19th century, Jewish religious culture WAS Jewish culture.
There was always a lively folk-culture. But Jews lived in isolation from the larger (high) culture. Without that influence, the intent of most artistic output was to God, serve the synagogue, serve the rabbi and the religious community. But such output largely ignored secular life as superficial and unworthy of serious attention. In the isolation of traditional communities, excellence in Torah scholarship, not success in the mundane affairs of business or public administration, was the pinnacle of intellectual achievement.
Today, as institutions like Jewish community centers have sought to secularize and Americanize Jewish identity, they have succeeded in rendering it essentially meaningless, promoting a secularized Judaism tied largely to an ever more remote Holocaust and support for an Israel that has become a state morally indistinguishable from so many others.
As a result, the synagogue remains the principal touchstone of identity in Jewish life, the main source of information on what Jewish identity means. Many Jews treat their local synagogues as bar mitzvah factories, remaining affiliated only as long as they must in order to have their children's Jewish identities officially consecrated. This time-worn process is about ethnic identity, not faith.
Many other syngogue-goers remain affiliated, even after their children's religious obligations are fulfilled, even in the absence of belief in the supernatural. They do this because the synagogue is the one place in their lives where their personal histories are affirmed; where the identity, 'Jew,' has content and meaning.
One Jew's opinion, anyway.
