holy names for our dybbuk
A Ritual Performance at Jewish sites in Poland
June 30 + July 2, 2024
Kraków, Poland
Portrait of The Dybbuk (dead flowers), archival inkjet print, variable dimensions, 2022 (photo credit Aaron Farley)
Premiering at the 8th annual FestivALT in Kraków, Poland on June 30 and July 2, 2024, Holy Names for Our Dybbuk represents the culmination of Jewish-American artist Julie Weitz’s extensive research during her tenure as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar. Centered on revitalizing Yiddish folklore in Poland, Weitz employs collaborative performance strategies that intricately weave together Yiddish dance, song, mask, and storytelling at sites of Jewish memory.
In Yiddish folklore tradition, the “dybbuk” is a wandering spirit that clings to a living body to communicate messages from the dead. In rounds of Hebrew chanting, hypnotic movements, interviews with the dybbuk, and the sounding of the shofar, a group of healers would loosen the spirit’s grip on the host body in an experience of collective transmutation. Holy Names for Our Dybbuk reimagines a dybbuk exorcism for our times, as a movement-based score and site-specific ritual. The artists have chosen sites of Jewish commemoration in Poland to bring audiences and performers into direct and embodied encounters with Jewish grief embedded in the land.
Julie Weitz, Wherever We Live, That’s Our Homeland (Dybbuk in Jewish Cemetery, Tarnow, Poland), archival inkjet print, 2024 (photo credit Magda Chudzik)
Created by Weitz, in collaboration with Polish choreographer Magdalena Przybysz, the 40-minute performance features Weitz as the lead performer with a multigenerational, Polish and Jewish-American ensemble. Weitz, as the dybbuk, becomes a channel for ancestral grief. Through rhythmic Hebrew chants and Hasidic-inspired choreography, the ensemble engages the dybbuk, creating a somatic and symbolic ritual to exorcize ancestral trauma from both the body and the land.
Weitz is actively fundraising to produce the performance and document the ritual as a short film that will be directed by American and Polish Jewish filmmaker Nessa Norich. The project is fiscally sponsored and tax-deductible donations are received by Fulcrum Arts, a non-profit arts service organization. The project’s budget is available by request.
Release your dybbuk
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Release your dybbuk 〰️
לאָז אַרויס דײַן דיבוק
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לאָז אַרויס דײַן דיבוק 〰️
Uwolnij Swoją_go Dybbuk
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Uwolnij Swoją_go Dybbuk 〰️
Release your Dybbuk!
Are we possessed? In Yiddish folklore tradition, we release ourselves from possession by exorcizing the dybbuk, a wandering spirit that clings to our bodies and communicates messages from the dead. Join Jewish-American artist Julie Weitz and Polish choreographer Magda Przybysz for a workshop featuring their choreographic research of Ashkenazi rituals of exorcism. They intertwine elements of Yiddish dance, song, costumery, and storytelling to open pathways for navigating ancestral grief and trauma, all while participating in the resurgence of dybbuk folklore within Poland. Conducted in both English and Polish, participants are encouraged to dress comfortably and all are welcome!
Poster Design @b.e.a.t.n.i.k.
Release Your Dybbuk Workshop, JCC March 20 2024 (photo credit Piotr Kulisiewicz)
Release Your Dybbuk Workshop, JCC March 20 2024 (photo credit Piotr Kulisiewicz)
Release Your Dybbuk Workshop, JCC March 20 2024 (photo credit Piotr Kulisiewicz)
The Dybbuk in poland
Film still, Der Dybbuk, dir. Michał Waszyński, Poland, 1937
For centuries, the figure of the dybbuk populated the Yiddish folktales of Eastern Europe, animating the dreams and waking life of daily Jewish existence before the Holocaust. During the interwar period in Poland, the dybbuk gained widespread attention after the folktale was adapted into a play by S.Anski and produced by multiple theaters in Warsaw. Two years before the Nazi occupation of Poland, the play was turned into a Yiddish-language film by Michal Waszynski, which is considered the most important Yiddish film ever made. The Dybbuk featured original choreography by Jewish performers Judith Berg and Felix Fibich, who fled Warsaw at the start of the Nazi occupation in 1939. Almost a century later, Weitz and her collaborators pick up where these great Polish Jewish artists left off by returning to the lands of their ancestors to stage collaborative performances inspired by the dybbuk.