BOOST: Watch ‘Kaddish (How to be a Sanctuary)’ at EdFringe 2025 – “No crusading here, just simple, vital humanity.” (Ad)

This is a promoted post paid for by Lila Weitzner & Sam Sherman for EdFringe 2025.
All funds raised through advertising on bingefringe.com pay our contributors the Living Wage for their work.
Find out more here.

Care to learn how to curse in Yiddish and witness a reckoning between a Jewish grandson going to do solidarity work in Palestine and his long-passed grandfather who fought the Nazis in World War II? Kaddish (how to be a sanctuary) uses the real archival journals of playwright/performer Sam Sherman”s grandpa Saul N. Sherman—a Jewish WWII vet from New Jersey—and intersperses it with Sam’s account of growing up around activism in Washington, DC and his experiences going to do “protective presence” work in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank. 

Playwright/performer Sam Sherman and director/co-creator Lila Weitzner met when they were six weeks old at a group for newborn babies at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, DC. We have been making art and talking about what it means to be Jewish together for as long as they can remember. This play was created out of deep despair as we watched a genocide unfold in Gaza. 

As we read Sam’s grandfather’s accounts of growing up Jewish in 1930s New Jersey and fighting the Nazis in WWII, we were inspired by how much his language spoke to the time we are living in now. Weaving Sam and his grandfather’s stories together has become a way for us to look towards our ancestors to find strength in this moment. As Fiona Shepherd of The Scotsman put it, “No crusading here, just simple, vital humanity.”

You can watch Kaddish (How to be a Sanctuary) until August 9th at Studio at theSpaceTriplex from 22:30 (55mins). Tickets (£10 / £8 conc.) are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.