Doikayt / hereness

a photographic performance series

2022-Present

***Wherever We Live That's Our Homeland (Dybbuk in Jewish Cemetery, Tarnow, Poland),*** archival print, 2024 (photo credit Magda Chudzik)

Since 2018, Weitz’s research has explored intersections of diasporic identity, folklore, and embodied memory. Through her ongoing photographic performance project Doikayt/Hereness, she engages with prewar Yiddish art, poetry, and performance—often imbued with a queer sensibility—to position Yiddish culture as a transformative model for reclaiming language and identity amid ethnic violence and displacement.

What do the ghosts of history have to teach us about healing from the traumas of our future?

Doikayt, meaning "hereness" in Yiddish, calls for a rooted presence, a critical exploration of belonging, and an embodied experience of Jewishness within the diaspora. Once a guiding principle for Jewish socialists in prewar Eastern Europe, it has re-emerged in the 21st century as a cultural and political framework for radical Jewish diasporism, standing in solidarity with global liberation movements.

***Do Not Stand By At Your Neighbor’s Blood (Dybbuk in Old Podgorze Cemetery, Krakow-Plaszow),*** archival print, 2024 (photo credit Magda Chudzik)

***Portrait of The Tzadik (Doikayt),*** archival inkjet print, variable dimensions, 2022. (Photo credit Aaron Farley)

Drawing from doikayt’s Yiddish lineage, Weitz reanimates Yiddish storytelling and performance traditions through a somatic and place-based framework, embodying this reclamation as a means to heal deeply rooted wounds and imagine new pathways for repair and renewal.

Preserved over centuries, these stories are rich with mystical figures like tzadiks, dybbuks, and golems—archetypes that once animated the dreams and daily lives of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The tzadik, a holy figure often disguised as a beggar; the dybbuk, a restless spirit inhabiting a living body; and the golem, a clay protector summoned in times of peril, embody the profound creativity and resilience of the Yiddish spiritual imagination.

By examining how caricature, folklorism, and emplacement can reshape the narratives of diasporic culture, Weitz revitalizes these mythic symbols as contemporary tools for interpreting the present and imagining new futures—a practice she frames as Judeofuturism.

***The Psychedelic Tzadik***, archival inkjet print, variable dimensions, 2023 (photo credit Jackie Langelier)

Weitz's exploration of these characters began in 2018 as a response to the rise of white supremacy and antisemitism in the United States and expanded to Europe in 2023. Her performances engage deeply with Jewish memory as it is rooted in the land, while critically examining the theological and historical dimensions of nationalism, which often negate the experiences of exile and diaspora. Through the performative lenses of clowning and drag, Weitz crafts powerful, political statements about the world and humanity's collective struggle for liberation.

For a deeper understanding of her process and perspective, explore Weitz’s performance projects featured on this website, her 2023 essay in Ayin Press, and other recently published works.