But what I discovered on the cobbled streets of Edinburgh, under the bunting and in amongst the beer gardens, in darkened theatre venues and makeshift performance spaces, was a surprising climate of acceptance.
"There's been times where I've been, not afraid of it, but I’ve been interested in how people will react when I mention I’m Jewish,” said Fringe performer Ryan Simpson, whose musical show Accordion Ryan’s Pop Bangers features upbeat pop songs played on the accordion. “But I think audiences appreciate that I share that part of myself with them.”
Ryan Simpson's show "Accordion Ryan's Pop Bangers", running at the Edinburgh Fringe until 24 August at the Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower, is a joyous performance of pop songs and original songs played on the accordion. (Photo: Facebook)[Missing Credit]
Simpson’s show is among the less overtly Jewish at this year’s Fringe, but other Jewish performers, many of whose shows place Judaism at their centre, have been similarly at ease.
Take Marcus Freed, whose autobiographical show Marcus is Alive tells the story of a hit-and-run that nearly killed him on the way to Friday night shul. When I asked if he’s faced any backlash, any mid-show jeers, he said the responses have been “the opposite”.
“People are very positive. The experience is good – I don’t know, I like being Jewish,” he laughed. “On the ground it’s not as bad as it looks in the media; there’s a lot of coverage of the negativity, but there’s so much positive.”
Mind you, the few widely covered negative incidents have given just cause for concern, like when the popular venue Whistelbinkes pulled Rachel Creeger’s show Ultimate Jewish Mother and Philip Simon’s show Jew-o-Rama over “safety concerns” for its staff, despite the venue having no issue housing the same shows last year. The staff allegedly said the added security required for the Jewish performers made them feel more at risk (not sure about the logic on that one) and falsely claimed one of the previous shows had included a vigil for an IDF soldier, which they later retracted.
Then there was the hostile pro-Palestine protest that interrupted an event featuring First Minister John Swinney as he spoke, ironically, about freedom of speech in Scotland, and of course, there are the many posters graffitied with slogans like “Gaza is starving, Israel is guilty”, “stop the genocide” and “death to the IDF”.
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For Jewish festival goers, news of such incidents can be daunting.
“I was very, very nervous about coming to the Fringe this year,” said actor and Jewish festivalgoer Rachel Gaffin, who went to watch her daughter perform with a university drama group. “I expected to find a sea of pro-Palestinian flags and demonstrations and graffiti.”
Gaffin, who returned to the Fringe for the first time last year after more than thirty years away, had been shaken by the news of Creeger and Simon’s venue cancellation. This year, she made a note of every show in the programme that looked even vaguely Jewish, determined to support Jewish artists. “I ended up seeing acts that I didn’t even know were Jewish, and when the people performing mentioned they were Jewish there was silence,” she said. “I was so nervous for them – but it just did not feel uncomfortable, it was absolutely fine.”
While Simpson, a four-time festival performer, said he’s never faced any criticism for mentioning his Jewishness on stage, but admitted that the atmosphere at the Fringe “has definitely shifted in the last few years.”
“It's a bit tougher to be a Jewish performer. I'm very left wing about most things, and it's tough being a Jew in that space; as an artist, you are expected to very much have one set of views,” Simpson said. “But having a Jewish upbringing and knowing a lot of people who are Jews, who are in Israel, they have very different views on things, and it's tough to be stuck between two worlds while just trying to be an artist.”
The poster for Marcus Freed's show "Marcus is Alive", running at the Edinburgh Fringe until 24 August at Braw Venues at Hill Street. (Photo: Marcus Freed)[Missing Credit]
For Freed, being a Jew in the entertainment industry has been “very surreal”, at times prompting him to downplay his Jewishness - although “only slightly.”
When Freed's show Marcus is Alive ran in the US prior to making its Fringe debut, the poster featured a Bet Hey in the upper right corner, but he removed it before bringing the show to the UK at a friend’s recommendation.
“I didn’t want anything so obviously Jewish on the flyer,” Freed said. “But I do still have the strapline ‘Fleabag meets Fiddler on the Roof.”
Jewishness proved, in show after show that I saw at the Fringe, to be more of a boon than a barrier. Audiences actually seemed to warm to performers after they mentioned their Jewishness, shoulders loosening, laughs coming easier. Granted, I didn’t have the privilege of attending every Jewish show on offer, nor gauging the sentiment at every pro-Palestinian show for signs of latent antisemitism. I can only report what I found, and what I found was this: talented artists who are proud to be Jewish, performing their shows regardless of the added risk.
And guess what? It seems to be paying off.
