Before coming here, then, it was a surprise to me to find an online network of Jews in Germany trying to square their spiritual beliefs with their homosexuality.
Gad rolls his eyes and tells me about a run-in he had one year during Berlin's Christopher Street Parade.
'These people from Yachad Deutschland were walking there with the Israeli flag. And this was the middle of the intifada, and I just thought to myself we're having a nice, tolerant thing over here. We don't want an Israeli flag. We didn't have a German flag, we don't want any national flags.'
'So I went over and said, "Fuckin' Jews"—I was drunk—as a joke. And they were hysterical! They were waiting for it—they were waiting for somebody to do something—and nobody cared! So they jumped at me. And thank God I still had an Israeli passport—I took it out and said, "Sorry girls".'
He laughs devilishly. 'They were furious!'
He pauses to stub out a cigarette. 'Identity politics sucks.'
'Didn't you encounter any anti-Semitism when you came here?'
'Of course, I did. There's quite a bit of anti-Semitism here, but then there's quite a bit of anti-Semitism everywhere.'
But if anything, he adds, that's not the problem for Jews in Germany, particularly not in artsy circles.
'Nowadays I find the problem is also philo-Semitism—the love for Jews. It's disturbing. You don't know how popular you can get without having done anything. I lived in a flat, and my flatmate would clean the dishes all the time. And I was wondering, Is he in love with me? And then I found out—you know what? I'm a VIP! And that's a problem if you're sincere, in the sense that you really don't want people to like you just because, "Oh, he's Jewish, let's have a Jew around, that's exotic." Because German identity is based on guilt toward the Jews.'
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