It started with one pun and led to another. Veteran Jewish educator Alastair Falk devised his own one-man show —Much Ado About Noshing — and took it to the Edinburgh Fringe. What a great idea, he thought, if there were a Jewish fringe festival. You could call it Tsitsit after the fringed garment worn by Orthodox men. For most people it would have remained there — a passing thought, a fun joke. But Falk, instigator of the Limmud festival back in the 1980s, doesn’t work like that.
Or maybe it didn’t start with the pun. Maybe the concept of Tsitsit started back in the 1970s when Falk was a teacher at the Orthodox Jewish boarding school Carmel College. There he taught pupils from all over the world, most of them not Orthodox at all, but , he recalls, “deeply, deeply Jewish”. He realised that there “are very, very many ways of expressing your Jewishness”.
So Tsitsit, which launched last year and returns in November, aims to celebrate all kinds of Jewish culture under the strapline “If it’s Jewish enough for you, it’s Jewish enough for us.” Upcoming events include a new play, These Demons, by Rachel Bellman exploring Jewish demonology alongside themes of fear, identity and “otherness”; an evening of music and comedy at the Arts Depot in Finchley, featuring six top stand-ups and Nick Cassenbaum’s hilarious new play about a plot to kidnap a well-known Labour politician and an evening exploring Yiddish theatre.
There there’s an evening featuring poems from one of Israel’s greatest poets, Yehuda Amichai and another celebrating Scots and Yiddish culture, inspired by Sholem Asch’s 1923 play God of Vengeance, performed by Asch’s great, great granddaughter, Clara Kanter. At JW3 there’s Velkom to Inklandt, a new one-woman-play adapted from Sophie Herxheimer’s book about life as an immigrant. Musical offerings include klezmer/Sephardi band Buenos Klezmer; an evening of Jews in Jazz, and a concert by Israeli musician Noga Ritter.
The venues are North and Central London, but Falk is already planning a bigger festival for next summer, which he hopes will centre on new writing and spread beyond London.
“This is an unbelievable time for Jewish culture,” he says. “What we’re seeing is a lot of Jewish creatives reconnecting, rediscovering, re exploring what being Jewish means.” Many of them are doing that as a response to antisemitism —he cites Jonathan Freedland’s play at the Royal Court Jews. In Their Own Words, and also the evening of new Jewish writing at the Kiln Theatre held in the summer, which included Cassenbaum’s play.
His hope is that Tsitsit offers these creatives a natural place to move beyond a “first response” to antisemitism. “Where do you showcase those ideas? Where do you develop those ideas?” He hopes they will “start exploring the kind of breadth and variety and richness of Jewish heritage”. To that end, Tsitsit supported three residencies at the Arts Depot in Finchley this year.
All of this is, of course, partly what Limmud is all about. Falk was inspired to set up the annual festival celebrating Jewish life and learning after a visit to America, he discussed it with friends and the first Limmud was held in 1980. Since then it has grown and grown, with Limmud events held all year round.
Now he is similarly inspired by what he calls the American “Jewish cultural renaissance”. But one difference between Limmud and Tsitsit is that while Limmud is still very much volunteer-based, the fringe festival recognises the need to pay creatives. Financial support from communal donors would be very welcome, he says, pointing out the vast contribution made by Jewish donors to Britain’s wider cultural life. Currently, the biggest supporter of Jewish arts is the Arts Council: how amazing, he says if we could create a Jewish Arts Counil to support new writing and other creative projects.
November is a busy month for Jewish cultural events, with Tsitsit sitting alongside the UK Jewish Film Festival. There are also plenty of other Jewish-themed shows around — Deli Segal brings her one-woman play Pickle back to the Park Theatre, for example, and the Israeli musical The Band’s Visit is a must-see at the Donmar Warehouse. Is there a danger of overload?
Falk points out that this iteration of Tsitsit is just a mini version of last year’s launch — which had been planned for June 2021 but was pushed back because of Covid restrictions. Falk is aware of the Jewish cultural calendar, with the film festival in November and Jewish Book Week in March: “We’re trying to work out where do we sit in that calendar?” His hope is that all the Jewish cultural organisations will work more closely together, creating a joint calendar and perhaps some joint initiatives. An umbrella body for the Jewish arts? Maybe. These ideas are big and bold, and for most people would remain just talking points. But Alastair Falk is a man who makes things happen.
There’s a lot of energy around, he says, a lot of creative people thinking about their Jewishness. Applying for funding for the Arts Depot residencies, the people involved talked about wanting to “explore their Jewishness and to unassimilate”. He loves the phrase. “The Jewish cultural renaissance offers something to people who don’t find their Jewish needs met within current communal institutions,” he says. “I mean, obviously, they find some of it. But there’s other bits of the soul that you touch outside the synagogue.”

tsitsitfringe.org/tsitsit-2022