KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
some Jews hesitated to buy their products, perhaps because they thought it strange for young Jews to be chopping and selling wood and perhaps because the kibbutzniks were competing with peas- ants who had been supplying the firewood to the Jews of the town for centuries. Beitar was named for Josef Trumpeldor, who emigrated to Pal- estine in 1912 and organized the Jewish Legion, first against Tur - key and later in self-defense against Arabs. In 1920, he was killed during an Arab attack on Jews in Tel Chai. His dying words, “Tov lamut be’ad artzaynu,” (it is good to die for our country) became a Zionist slogan. Other Zionist youth movements in town included Hatchia (the Zionist Education and National Revival movement), HeChalutz (The Pioneer), HaOved (The Worker), and HaNo’arHaOved (The Working Youth). All these youth groups competed energetically in sports tournaments and fund-raising efforts; membership was usu - ally based upon friendships rather than ideological distinctions. The primary focus for all the youth groups was Eretz Yisrael. Young people in Ludvipol exchanged letters with young people who had already made aliyah and learned Israeli songs and dances. The movements collected libraries of Hebrew books and sponsored wide-ranging discussion groups about literature, music, theater, politics, and Israel. Jewish political life in the 1920s was “a spectacle of bewildering abundance and variety” with parties and factions covering every inch of the political spectrum, and all of them represented even in the smallest shtetlach (small Jewish towns). 2 The Zionist move- ment itself included dozens of competing splinter groups in an “ex- travagant pluralism [that] bespoke the ebullient self-confidence of Polish Jewry, even in the face of growing anti-Semitism.” 3 Every four years, when elected delegates from the international Zionist congress gathered from all over the world, Zionist energies in Ludvipol intensified. One could hardly go anywhere in town without hearing Hebrew pioneer songs. In records archived at Beth
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