דיבוקים i شهداء (Dybbukim i Shuhada – Dybbuks and Martyrs) was an event  that encompassed two acts of genocide: the Holocaust and the genocide committed by Israel against the people of Gaza. It involved two entities: the dybbuk and the shahid. The title, written in three languages – Hebrew, Arabic and Polish – reflects the structure of the performance: דיבוקים i شهداء. The Polish word here is the conjunction ‘i’ (‘and’).

The dybbuk (plural dybbukim) originates in Yiddish culture (but has also been adopted into Polish culture) is a restless, rootless, unsettled soul of someone who has died a bad death, an unfortunate or tragic death, often out of an act of hatred. It possesses a living person so that it can act through them, resolve what is unfinished and end what should be ended.

Shahid (plural shuhada) is the Arabic word for martyr, meaning witness. A shahid may be someone who died fulfilling Allah’s will, but also someone who has suffered a bad death, such as in an act of extreme violence.

In the performance, the four shuhada refer to the more than thirteen thousand children who have died since 7th October 2023 in the act of reckless Israeli violence.
The four dybbukim in the performance wore masks and white costumes – cloaks decorated with pieces of fabric torn in the traditional Jewish act of kriah – despair after the death of a loved one.
Each dybbuk cradled and lamented over the body of a shahid wrapped in a kafan (shroud). The titular conjunction ‘i’ (‘and’) indicates the origin of the participants – four women from Poland – the country where the shadow of the Holocaust has long darkened their lives.

They opened themselves to the restless beings of the dybbuks seeking fulfilment. They found a crack in themselves through which the dybbuks could slip in. For the dybbukim, fulfilment, resolution, and solace became despair and mourning over the crime committed in their name.

I was one of those dybbukim. All four of us carried those small bodies – the bodies of children. The moment of putting on the mask was a jolt. It was this crack, this imperfection that allowed the dybbuk to slip in. The crack was narrow and unexpected. Allowing the dybbuk to slip in is no different from motherhood. Carrying someone else’s life within you is as far from ownership as possible. Difference must be nurtured and watched over so as not to cross the boundary of separateness. A separate life is given to the world.

The performance was not based on any kind of symbols. It used the language of embodiment, of incarnation, and allowing another’s energy to inhabit the body. The dybbukim were not symbols, they were disembodied, restless and unsettled energy.

The shuhada, too, were not symbols, they were, like the dybbukim, disembodied, restless and unsettled energy. Between them and for them were the bodies of the four ‘ands’ – vessels for the energy of past crimes, which by the force of ‘and’ arced over the consequences of the crimes committed now.

These crimes are connected and will forever be connected by a complex network of causes and effects, interdependencies, responsibilities, even rational justifications, and, in a mystical layer, a straight line of inheritance. Crime defiles and destroys both the perpetrator and the victim. Crime is inherited on the back of trauma. And that is what I felt the moment the mask was pulled over my face. I was only the conjunction – the ‘and’ – but even the ‘and’ is not clean from responsibility.