If you have the backing of your tribe, you can move forward on their shoulders

While I enjoy drama on stage, I’ve never been that excited by it in my everyday life. I think that the Jewish community has had more than its fair share, and many of us have a family history that includes unfortunate and complex moments that have led to wherever we are today.

Last year’s unexpected drama for me was the cancellation of my comedy show “Ultimate Jewish Mother” just two weeks before the Edinburgh Fringe, by the venue that had hosted it for the previous few years. The publicity around this sparked a wave of targeted antisemitism towards me that included death threats and vandalism. Thanks to the immense support of the Jewish, Scottish and comedy communities, CST, Police Scotland and two fabulous venues, the show went on.

Once I was home and things quietened down for me, I started to reflect on the experience and the impact it had made. I was struck by the way my intersectional communities had rallied together to carry me, and it made me think about my family’s responses to difficult times. My father’s family (Russian and Polish) would make art and tell jokes. My mother’s family (German) would make music and cook. Jews from those places know the importance of processing, coping and staying resilient, and also of leading with love. If you have the backing of your tribe, you can move forward on their shoulders.

It occurred to me that my experiences last summer weren’t that unique. Jewish history, my family’s history, even my own personal history is made up of these moments of darkness where we have had to reach for the light or sometimes be the one to shine it for someone else. Growing up in Essex in the 70s, racism was a surrounding culture that we all lived with, and it didn’t hit too hard because the Jewish community was big and proud and a huge hug that helped us to stay strong.

In hindsight, having hostile external experiences in my teens had the opposite of its desired effect as it just cemented my identity as part of this enormously diverse Jewish world.

My natural reaction to last year’s complicated Edinburgh Fringe experience was to find the light, and my power to make it shine. As a stand-up comedian, my superpower has to be communication through humour. For a long while I’d been thinking about creating a show that explored how someone as white-passing as me could be the focus of anti-Jewish hatred, and I’d often wondered how, or if, other people would connect to that idea.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been touring the UK with my new show, Queen of the Jews! as a work in progress. The show is a journey through moments of antisemitism from micro to macro aggressions, and how to find a way forward with strength and resilience through those experiences. It uses jokes to make the material palatable, without minimising the nature and intent of each event, and opens up a conversation about what people assume and expect when it comes to someone like me, a British Jew whose grandparents came to the UK for safety.

I’ve found the different responses around the country fascinating, especially once you move away from big cities to areas without a known Jewish community. The advertising of the show might have received the expected hate-filled comments from bots and saddos on social media, but the feedback from actual audience members and local human beings has been almost universally positive. People are curious, interested, open and warm. They want to try and understand my identity and perspective.

They want to filter what they see and hear online through the life of someone in the eye of that storm. Some are horrified by the stories I tell, some are sad. And when I come across those who grew up in my neck of the woods or who come from similar stock, they find themselves remembering the situations I describe, which had become so much the fabric of the time that they barely warranted discussion. We talk about how all trends come back in style, what a shame it is that racism has never been out of fashion, and how more unites us than divides us.

The Edinburgh Fringe is an exciting and diverse space, full of unique voices and experiences and I’m excited to be going back. Its ethos is “to give anyone a stage and everyone a seat”. Audiences vote with their feet and their wallets, spending time and money where they choose, and I always feel it’s a privilege if anyone chooses an hour with me when they could be doing anything else. I’m hoping that this summer’s Fringe will allow me to keep the drama on stage, and to allow other people a peek behind the curtain to see how strong we are, how we take what the world throws at us, place crowns on each other’s heads, and create art.

Rachel Creeger: Queen of the Jews! runs from 7 -31 August (not Saturdays) at 2.30pm at Hoots @ The Apex. Ultimate Jewish Mother is also running at the same venue, same dates, at 11.20am. Tickets at edfringe.com