Fraytik tsu Nakht Shabbes for Cultural Jews
Fri, Mar 21
|Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture
Our monthly Secular Humanist Shabbes celebration, potluck, and, for March, guest speaker Braden Russell will explore the ways in which queer Jews are forging new ways to engage with Jewish identity, tradition, and history through their art.
Time & Location
Mar 21, 2025, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, 6184 Ash St, Vancouver, BC V5Z 3G9, Canada
Event Description
*****IMPORTANT: Please note that our elevator is out of service at this time. We are working to repair it as soon as possible.*****
Fraytik tsu Nakht Shabbes for Cultural Jews is open to all, beginning with our community's Secular Humanist Shabbes observance (songs and readings) followed by a potluck dinner and an engaging speaker to stimulate our learning and discussion.
Admission: a contribution to the pot luck OR pay $18.00 per person (children are free).
Please register early to help us make sure there's enough food for everyone.
This month's after-dinner topic: Queer Jewish Art in Berlin
Since the 1990s, Germany’s Jewish community has undergone a unique resurgence and transformation. Berlin, long known for its cosmopolitan and queer-friendly atmosphere, has become not only a hub for LGBTQ+ life but also a central space for Jewish cultural production. Today, queer Jews from diverse backgrounds—including those from Israel/Palestine, North and South America, and the former Soviet republics—are reshaping what it means to be Jewish in Germany. Through collectives, activism, and artistic expression, queer Jews are forging new ways to engage with Jewish identity, tradition, and history.
This talk explores how queer Jewish cultural practitioners in Berlin are using photography, painting, drag performance, and literature to challenge and redefine Jewishness. Their work offers new narratives extending beyond Germany and into the global Jewish experience.
Our speaker: Braden Russell (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in Germanic Studies in the UBC Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies. His research focuses on queer Jewish literary production in contemporary Germany, and how authors negotiate concepts of “being-Jewish enough” in their works. Looking at novels written by self identifying Jewish, queer and non-queer authors, Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Olga Grjasnowa, Braden contends that these work offer ways for Jews in Germany to counter antisemitic, philosemitic, Islamophobic, and queerphobic logics. Moreover, these cultural products become a milieu for kinship and community building that resist and lay outside heteronormative and ethno-national frameworks.
Event Image Credit: Braden Russell!