Rabbi uses shofar to blow antisemitism out of the Edinburgh Festival

This year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe was marred by controversy after two Jewish comedians were banned from performing at a city venue, sparking widespread accusations of antisemitism.

Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon were scheduled to perform their shows “Ultimate Jewish Mother” and “Jew-O-Rama” at Whistlebinkies, a popular pub venue. Both acts were pulled just days before the festival began, with the venue citing “safety concerns.” Neither show contained political content, and both performers rejected the venue’s implication that their presence posed a risk. The decision was condemned across the arts community as discriminatory and deeply troubling.

In response to the scandal, Los Angeles-based actor, writer and rabbi Marcus J Freed staged a spiritual act of resilience on the festival’s final day. As Edinburgh’s streets bustled with performers and tourists, Freed walked through the city, including outside Whistlebinkies, blowing a shofar, the traditional ram’s horn sounded during the Jewish month of Elul in the lead-up to Rosh Hashanah.

“Today felt like the right moment to bring light into the darkness,” Freed explained. He described his own experience of “semitism” while participating in the festival and said the shofar was a way of reclaiming Jewish presence and pride in a space that had recently turned hostile.

Freed’s performance of his one-man play “Marcus Is Alive” marked the final stop on a 12-week, five-city, three-country tour that began at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Appropriately, his solo show explores Jewish memory, history and survival through the eyes of a character navigating the trauma of the past.

The shofar blasts, echoing through the streets of Edinburgh, were a fitting close to a festival that had exposed ongoing challenges for Jewish artists, and a powerful reminder that Jewish identity cannot be silenced.