Hereland is a multi-faceted art project led by visual artist Julie Weitz that interweaves performance, film, installation, and collaborative, place-based practices with transnational networks of diasporic Jewish artists, scholars, and activists. Rooted in research, community engagement, and ancestral memory, the project activates the diasporic concepts of doikayt—Yiddish for “hereness”—and radical diasporism as living, liberatory frameworks. Weitz brings folkloric figures from Yiddish culture into contemporary dialogue, staging them in resonant sites—often places where Jewish life and language were nearly eradicated—to explore themes of loss, memory, and collective healing. Her work engages with caricature, folklorism, and emplacement to reimagine the past, respond to the present, and envision liberatory futures for all.

Building on this artistic foundation, Hereland cultivates creative collaboration, ritual, and embodied learning through artist-led online workshops, cross-diasporic dialogues, and immersive in-person retreats. We co-create pilgrimages and decentralized communities of practice that affirm Jewish identity as a force for healing, justice, and renewal. Committed to transnational diasporic resistance, we nurture community across geographies through collaborative programming, digital resource sharing, and land-based gatherings rooted in ancestral wisdom and liberatory Jewish traditions. Our goal is to transform Jewish cultural and spiritual life by fostering embodied, sensory engagement and collective imagination grounded in radical Jewish nonviolence and diasporism.