Obermayer Award

“I have to do something so that children’s first contact with Judaism is not the [Holocaust].”

Shlomit Tripp and her Bubales puppets make learning about Jewish culture fun for kids and adults alike

by Toby Axelrod

Bright colors, bouncy characters, laughter, song, and surprise: All can be found in Shlomit Tripp’s Bubales puppet theater, which brings Jewish culture to audiences across Germany.

Shlepping her homemade puppets and props in huge suitcases on train trips throughout the country, Tripp has met with audiences large and small, young and old—in elementary schools, Jewish communities, museums, mosques, and refugee shelters. Even during the pandemic, when in-person gatherings have been restricted, people can still follow the adventures of the Jewish boy Shlomo and his Muslim friend Ayşe as they navigate their intercultural world online.

In Germany, where the word Jew is still usually associated with the Holocaust and where mainstream society often views minorities with a mix of curiosity and mistrust, the Bubales puppet theater has made a huge contribution to building intercultural and interfaith bridges.

Sometimes Tripp will ask children in her audience what they know about Jews. A six-year-old boy once told her, “Jews are the ones who were all killed. There was a man who didn't like them, and he killed them all.”

Tripp realized: “If this is what a six-year-old German child has learned about Judaism, how can you build up a normal German-Jewish relationship? And that was the point where I knew: All right, I have to do something so that children’s first contact with Judaism is not the [Holocaust].”

She’s a woman of her word. Recently, in her home city of Berlin, Tripp performed a Hanukkah show for a rapt, multi-faith audience of children and parents. Seated on the carpeted floor, children drew close to the little stage as “Shlomo’s magical Hanukkah lamp” cast its swirling, colorful lights across the darkened room. They eagerly called out answers to Hanukkah-related questions and sang along to pre-recorded holiday songs, as puppet candles danced and a puppet dreidel spun. After the show, Turkish refreshments were served.

Most of the children were learning about Hanukkah for the first time. And all of the participants were bubbling over with enthusiasm. It was a rare evening of pure fun for all, an evening of light in the darkest season, amid an ever-looming pandemic. 

Tripp “travels across the country and meets the people, and she speaks with them through her puppets,” says Sigmount Koenigsberg, commissioner on antisemitism for the Jewish Community of Berlin. “Often I am rolling on the floor laughing when I see her shows... laughing with respect and love,” he says. “I am always thinking about how to fight prejudice. If you can get children interested, it is a very important step.”

Osman Örs, an imam and theological consultant at Berlin’s new interfaith House of One, agrees. “The earlier we start, the better,” he says. His own daughter, age 7, made a Jewish friend some years ago through a Bubales performance. “She and her friend saw themselves reflected” in the Jewish and Muslim characters, he says. “If children become youth and then after that become adults without having these kinds of experiences and skills, it is much easier to be ignorant and become prejudiced.”

Puppets, Pedagogy, and Family DNA

The main messages of Bubales are joy, friendship, and sharing. In the process, stereotypes are confronted in a playful, disarming way. And its cultural mélange reflects the many-faceted background of Tripp herself.

Shlomit Tripp, 51, was born in Berlin to Sephardic Jewish parents from Istanbul. Her grandparents had come to Turkey from Greece. Tripp’s youth was an odyssey, too. She moved with her parents, both journalists, to Prague and Moscow and other eastern European cities. It was in Turkey that Shlomit met the man she would marry, Gershom Tripp, from the United States. Today they collaborate on the puppet theater.

“All these different cultures have a strong influence on me,” Shlomit Tripp says. “Every generation in my family for three generations has a migration story. It’s in our DNA. So I understand the perspective of migrants very well.”

Puppets are in her DNA, too. During her study of art pedagogy in Berlin, Tripp “noticed that puppet theater was a very good didactic medium.” It must have been tugging at her already: Her maternal grandmother ran a shadow-puppet theater in a tent in an Istanbul marketplace, helping her husband—a “poor shochet,” or kosher slaughterer—support their six children.

Later, Tripp’s mother also put on shows with handmade, painted plaster puppets, a technique Tripp recently started employing as well.

“I am the third generation of women in my family to play with puppets,” laughs Tripp, who made her first creations with her late mother and used them to put on a Hanukkah show in Berlin’s Jewish Museum in 2008. “It was totally sold out, and I knew that this concept had to be continued.” 

At first she thought about reaching Jewish kids, to help them strengthen their Jewish identity. “There are German puppet theaters everywhere, with Christmas themes and so on. I thought, Jewish kids need their own puppet theater. But what astonished me was that so many others [figuratively] knocked on the door: ‘We want to see it, too!’”

The concept evolved. The program had to speak to people with no foreknowledge of Judaism. And to those who hadn’t shown an interest in the first place. Some families with a migration background, Turkish, Arabic, and Muslim, would show up—and ask: “Why do I have to look at a Jewish puppet theater?” Tripp recalled.

“But if there is a Turkish and Muslim puppet, then the kids wake up. And there is something from my culture there, too. It’s an empowerment within an empowerment. And so I built the bridge.”

Some Jewish audiences, too, are challenged. Tripp still gets questions, like: We found the piece super, but why does this Muslim puppet have to be there? Such questions are exactly why she does what she does. 

Learning and Selfies, Too

Founded in 2012, Bubales is billed as Germany’s oldest Jewish puppet theater. The puppets’ shapes look kind of familiar; “Jim Henson is my guru,” Tripp says, referring to the creator of Sesame Street and its world-famous puppet cast. But Tripp’s characters have their own unique appearances and personalities.

There is much collaboration behind the one-woman show: Her husband, Gershom, handles the technical aspects of the shows, and musicians record songs that Tripp later plays through loudspeakers.

On stage or in videos, Bubales offers a fun way to learn about Jewish customs and holidays, and about intercultural relations. It quickly won approval from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the main umbrella organization representing Jews in the country today.

After a performance, Tripp will talk to the audience and let them take selfies with the puppets. “It’s an experience they don’t forget,“ she says.

Tripp has branched out to other media: she has published children's books on intercultural and Jewish themes, was involved in school projects against anti-Semitism and racism, designed children's programs for the Jewish Museum Berlin, and since 2018 has directed the museum’s intercultural community programs.

Most recently, she created a series of Bubales videos for Germany’s nationwide project of more than 2,000 events honoring 1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany. Tripp’s puppets travel through the Jewish year in a “Shalomchen” bus, in an animated landscape. In the latest chapter, a wild-bearded Rabbi Blumenberg takes viewers to the “Hanukkah” bus stop and explains the holiday in a humorous and simple way. See the video (in German).

At one point, an improbable and adorable singing menorah with fetching eyes recounts the Hanukkah miracle, and in the end a chorus of puppet kids sings of the wonders together. 

“The original idea was to use a children’s puppet theater to explain to adults how Jewish holidays work,” says Andrei Kovacs, director of the #2021JLID Jewish Life in Germany project. Kovacs attended the Berlin University of the Arts with Trip and describes himself as “a friend and a fan.”

Not only does Tripp reach across cultural divides in her art, “She lives it, too,” says Kovacs. “She is a multiethnic and multi-identity person, which made her an excellent choice for this job... she did it in a fantastic way.” Tripp is on the cutting edge of a new Jewish scene in Germany, he says. 

“We’ve had 76 years of very difficult relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans,” Kovacs says. But “many people tell us they are gaining courage to go out in the public space to show Jewish life. Shlomit is part of this effort.”

The impact is clear, says Osman Örs. He met Jews for the first time in his late 20s, after his student years, he says, “but my daughter already has a Jewish friend, and had contact with the Jewish faith. And that is an enrichment.”

“I can make 1,000 speeches a year [about fighting anti-Semitism], but who listens to them?” asks Sigmount Koenigsberg. On the other hand, “A few days ago, a woman who is now about 20 years old told me, ‘I didn’t know much about Judaism, but I remember the ‘kosher machine’—a piece Shlomit did 10 years ago.”

There are several new projects in the works, from a multicultural family cooking show to a Bubales German-Turkish puppet theater.

Bubales productions have become so popular that they are inspiring others. Recently, Tripp has been coaching the Islam Foundation in building its new puppet theater, which already has been performing in German schools. Such experiences give her a boost, and help her put Germany’s dark history in perspective.

Often, when traveling with her puppets, she will meet people who tell her the only Jewish thing they know is the local cemetery.

“Sometimes I have the feeling that I am traveling through a land that is plastered with Jewish cemeteries,” she says. “It shows me how important it is for them to see living Judaism. I cannot pack live Jews in my suitcase, so I bring 20 Jewish puppets.” And for children, their first contact with Judaism is a positive one. “They see a beautiful culture. And later, they can deal with the [Holocaust],” she says. 

— Obermayer Award recipient 2022