If you came to Rodef Shalom Congregation Monday night looking to discover what defines Jewish music written in America, you'd have been severely disappointed. A concert of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival gave a clearer picture, but it only offered a wider glimpse of an expansive musical landscape that defies categorization.

Truth is, the theme of the festival's sixth season -- "The Jews in America" -- is about as far as one can go in describing the output of American Jewish composers. Many reference their faith, specific holidays or musical traditions such as klezmer. But they have long since become part of the greater musical fabric, following general aesthetic trends. These days, the cosmopolitan nature of the American music scene means that Jewish music can often be better defined in terms of the composer's identification, not how the music sounds.

On the chamber music program Monday was music that consciously mimed traditions of the past -- works that festival director and cellist Aron Zelkowicz called "Jewish sounding" -- and works that you'd never guess.

Take the poster boy for the subject, Ernest Bloch's "Psalm 114," a thundering yet profound setting that revealed an urgency of the text through stentorian and almost angry singing by soprano Katherine Soroka and resounding playing by pianist Natasha Snitkovsky. It could work in a Christian context.

Or witness Osvaldo Golijov's exquisite "Tenebrae," a post-minimalist, baroque-influenced work given a thoughtful performance by soprano Emily Albrink, clarinetist Ron Samuels, violinists Nurit Pacht and Dennis O'Boyle, violist Marylene Gingras-Roy and Zelkowicz. Its spiritual approach was decidedly secular, the composer's view of the Earth from space. And excerpts from Yehudi Wyner's "The Mirror" found Pacht, Samuels and Zelkowicz traipsing daintily through ephemeral writing meant to represent the mindset of the main character in Bashevis Singer's play.

Klezmer music sneaked into Wyner's piece, but was in full flower in David Schiff's Divertimento from "Gimpel the Fool" (but after a dead-on rendering of a rabbi in cello recitative by Zelkowicz) and in Simon Sargon's "Wedding Dance," a piece for violin and piano. Violinist Jennifer Orchard, like most of the other performers a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, transported Levy Hall into a shtetl with her amazingly idiosyncratic performance. Every slide and accent was right in step with the flexible klez style.

Albrink's silvery timbre floated above a watery texture created by Samuels, Zelkowicz and Snitkovsky in Meira Warshauer's "Eili, Eili (Caesaria)," and Bloch's "Simchas Torah" arranged for piano trio was a joyous celebration of the holiday that marks the end of the Torah cycle.

The Jewish Music Festival wraps up with a performance by the Andy Statman Trio at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, Squirrel Hill. Tickets: $20 general, $15 seniors, $10 students; 412-394-3353. http://www.proartstickets.org or http://www.pjmf.net.