Puppets And Peace: One Woman’s Mission To Make Jewish Culture Joyful For All
COLOGNE, Germany — Parents and children alike crowded Cologne’s Hänneschen Theater on the weekend of Purim. As the lights dimmed, little voices spoke in hushed whispers, holding cowbells and noisemakers at the ready. Soon, Shlomit Tripp took the stage, adorned in an oversized costume — with a puppet in hand.
Tripp performed at Cologne’s premiere puppet venue (the Hänneschen first began as a puppet theater in 1802) as the sole actor in her Jewish puppet troupe known as Bubales. As part of a Bubales tour, she told Cologne’s children the story of Purim, a holiday marking the date of Jewish salvation from the Persian Empire.
Puppets and pre-recorded audio allowed Tripp to play multiple parts at once. She performed in the tradition of melodrama, encouraging the audience to jeer and rattle their noisemakers any time the name “Haman” flashed on a screen above her. Tripp injected modern sensibilities into the story, with the name “Freddie Mercury” standing out amid the all-German dialogue — the children, Queen fans or not, laughed at the reference every time.
Regardless of background, all appeared enthralled before Tripp’s colorful creations and exaggerated voices. A row of young girls in the theater’s front reached out to interact with the performer or touch her heroine’s dazzling pink costume — when the show was over, Tripp took her puppets to give them each a high five. As disco lights filled the room, the play concluded with children and parents alike singing and dancing along to a repeated four-word refrain: “Purim! Purim! Happy Purim!”
Later, when asked if she has kids of her own, Tripp replied with a laugh: “No. But I have a lot of puppets.”
In 2012, Tripp founded Germany’s first Jewish puppet theater, Bubales — a name she said combines the Yiddish “bubales” and the Hebrew “buba” to mean “little puppet sweethearts.” Though stationed in Berlin, Bubales productions take the puppeteer across German-speaking countries.
These productions allow Tripp to connect directly to children, utilizing exaggerated voices and colorful costumes to tell stories of Jewish culture and interfaith acceptance. But this mission has gotten harder. In the wake of Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Tripp faced show cancellations, antisemitism and children hesitant to engage with Jewish stories. Though Bubales still strives to bring kids together, Tripp now fears for the children being left behind.
“I have, very often, kids who say, ‘I don’t want to watch Jewish puppet theater,’” Tripp said. “It’s very difficult. Right now, I don’t know how I can build a bridge.”
Still, she tries the best way she knows how. Tripp has puppeteering in her blood. Her mother studied textile design at university in Istanbul, allowing her to create characters and costumes for a number of puppet theaters. Her grandmother practiced the classic Turkish Karagöz theatre, a form of shadow puppetry emphasizing craft and musicality.
As a child, Tripp looked in wonder at these puppets, wanting to play with the colorful characters that meant so much to her maternal family. But Tripp’s mother taught her early that they were more than toys. These puppets carried the weight of performance and tradition in them.
“It was forbidden for me to touch them,” Tripp said. “They were something holy.”
As an adult, Tripp took up the family felt, bringing her generational talents to various theaters in Berlin. To supplement her art, she worked as a tour guide at the city’s Jewish Museum, eventually taking on a full-time job as an educator.
At the museum, Tripp grew concerned with younger visitors’ disconnect from Judaism. Many kids only knew about Jews through the Holocaust; one student, she said, thought all Jews went extinct after they were killed by Hitler.
At the same time, Tripp’s Jewish friends grew concerned as shiny Christmas baubles and Easter bunnies threatened to lure their children away from the Jewish faith.
Tripp knew these problems couldn’t be solved on the museum floor alone. If she truly wanted to connect with children, she needed to reach them on their level. She needed to teach them about Judaism in a way that was exciting, even “cool.” She needed to put her familial gift to use.
If Jim Henson and Fred Rogers could connect with kids through puppets, why couldn’t Shlomit Tripp?
“It’s really important that these kids understand that being Jewish is also fun,” Tripp said. “It’s not only the Shoah or this dry religion sitting in a synagogue and being bored.”
When Tripp started Bubales, she wanted to create something that would reach kids of all backgrounds — not just Jewish children. Though centered in Judaism, a strong interfaith belief permeates Bubales’ mission.
“I thought it’s really important that, when kids have their first contact with Jews, it’s a positive experience,” Tripp said. “A positive experience stays not just in the head, but in the heart.”
This cross-cultural impact gained Tripp international recognition. In 2022, she won an Obermayer Award for her work in promoting Jewish culture and interfaith exchange. Founded by American Jewish philanthropist Arthur Obermayer in 2000, the Obermayer Award seeks to recognize German individuals who make strides in preserving Jewish history and culture.
“We believe that understanding and being able to connect with one another is key. There’s often too much division,” said Rebecca Richards-Kramer, Director of Programs and Operations at Widen the Circle, a non-profit which distributes the Obermayer Award. “I think she’s come up with a really, really creative way of bringing people together.”
Richards-Kramer noted that Tripp’s work with Bubales holds even greater importance in Germany’s current political landscape. In the country’s February elections, the AfD — a far-right extremist party — received the second-most votes of any political group. One of the AfD’s primary positions is to step back from German memory culture, with members of the party believing the country over-emphasizes the importance of the Holocaust.
At times like this, teaching children about cultural acceptance becomes all the more vital.
“It’s more important than ever that we understand that erasure is a form of denial, and it’s a form of contemporary antisemitism,” Richards-Kramer said. “In the United States, we’re seeing the same thing.”
So Tripp carries the torch. The puppet master rotates through a number of shows each year, utilizing her craft to connect with children at schools, theaters and places of worship. In a typical year, Bubales stages more than 50 productions; in their biggest year, that number reached 80.
These shows mix historical characters and stories with original creations. Two of Tripp’s recurring puppets are Shlomo (a Jewish boy) and Ayşe (his Muslim friend), who tell each other stories about their respective faiths with curiosity and openness. Tripp hopes children adopt this attitude when they speak to each other after her shows.
Though rooted in Germany, Bubales productions take on an international identity. As a child, Tripp’s parents’ work brought her to various Eastern European countries, allowing her to develop fluency in both Czech and Russian. Today, Tripp considers hotels and trains her “second home.”
This cross-cultural spirit lies at the heart of her productions.
“I produced with Jewish Ukrainian refugees one of my plays in Ukrainian. We have another one in Arabic for the Arabic community, which is very important for me,” Tripp said. “Puppets are very good tools to build bridges between people because puppets are not scary. Puppets are cute, and they open the heart.”
There has been a call for such Jewish art in Germany. At a time of rising antisemitism, members of the German government seek ways to normalize and protect Jewish life across the country. Leonard Kaminski, personal advisor to the Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Antisemitism, said that his office fought to institute a Jewish culture fund. This fund allocates resources to small Jewish cultural projects in need.
Kaminski praised Tripp’s work, saying Germany must strive for a normalization of Jewish culture for all citizens — regardless of individual background.
“A Jewish cultural event is just a nice kind of cultural event, like any other cultural event that everyone can attend,” Kaminski said.
But Tripp finds this work much harder in the shadow of Oct. 7. Since then, Muslim and Turkish communities have begun to cancel Bubales performances. A man spit on her at a train station after he noticed the Hebrew lettering on her puppet boxes.
Several times, Tripp mentioned, Muslim students on school trips become distressed by — or outright refused to watch — her puppets.
“I had a situation when they started to cry. They cried, and they said, ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to watch.’ Some of them, of course, are Palestinian kids, and they have relatives in Gaza,” Tripp said. “I somehow can understand their feelings.”
Tripp desperately wants to reach these kids — the traumatized, the hurting. Yet building bridges seems harder than ever before. In the past, she thought of her puppets as she thought of her mother’s and grandmother’s: they were holy items, magic wands able to connect with children and bring people together.
“Right now, this magic wand?” she said. “The power is not working.”
This article has been published in partnership with the USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Casey Loving is attending USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism as a Master’s student pursuing documentary film.