HOW JUDAISM WAS IMPORTANT TO THE PARTISANS

Different partisan groups and people practiced and embraced Judaism in many different ways, I noticed that there were three main aspects that stuck out, embracing Judaism religiously, culturally, and some people chose to be Zionist as a way to express there Judaism. For instance, Hirsh Glick was a proud Zionist and we could see that through his poetry and his life. In one of his most famous poems, Zog nit kein mol, he says, "From lands so green with palms to lands all white with snow," referring to how Israel is a warm and happy place whereas Poland is a cold and depressing one. Also, when Glick was a child he was eager to participate in Zionist youth movements. Another example is how even in the toughest times the Bielskis partisan group spent the time building a synagogue in the depths of there forest hideout because a lot of there members were Hasidic Jews. Many Jewish communists did not believe in religion so instead, they embraced Judaism as a culture and used Jewish words like L'chaim and Hebrew words in Yiddish like Nitsokhn. Another example is how they spoke Yiddish as their first language instead of their native one. These are just a few of multiple examples of how even through the hardest times people still found ways to practice Judaism.