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The surprising history of one of
modern Judaism's most important songs.
In 1897, at the
First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, the delegates joined in a rousing
rendition of the song “Hatikvah.”
The beloved
Zionist hymn
would come to be known among generations of Jews around the world as the Jewish
national anthem. Yet it was not until 2004 that the Israeli government
officially designated “Hatikvah” as the country’s national anthem. Between
these two facts lies the curious tale of one of the most important songs in
modern Jewish history.
From a Poem to a Song
“Hatikvah” began
its life as a nine-stanza Hebrew poem entitled “Tikvatenu” (“Our Hope”). Its
author was a colorful 19th-century Hebrew poet, Naftali Hertz Imber (1856-1909), who hailed from Złoczów,
a town in Austro-Hungarian Galicia. Inspired by the Hibbat Zion movement of
early Zionism, Imber originally wrote the poem in 1878 while living in Jassy
(Yash), Romania.
As a young
man, Imber wandered Eastern Europe for several years before settling in Ottoman Palestine in 1882. There he worked
as personal secretary and Hebrew tutor to Sir Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888), an eccentric British
author, politician, world traveler, and Christian Zionist.
In the
1880s, Oliphant’s mystical religious beliefs inspired him to launch various
philanthropic efforts to encourage Jewish resettlement in the historic Land of
Israel. Imber first published “Tikvatenu” in an 1886 collection of his poetry,
“Barkai,” (Morning Star), issued in Jerusalem and dedicated to Oliphant.
By the time
Imber left Palestine in 1888, his poem had become a song (soon renamed
“Hatikvah,” Hebrew for “The Hope”) thanks to the early Zionist pioneers in the
Jewish farming community of Rishon-le-Zion. The melody arrived courtesy of a
Romanian Jewish immigrant named Samuel
Cohen, who adapted it from a Moldavian folk song, “Carul cu
Boi” (Cart and Oxen). “Hatikvah” spread rapidly among Jewish pioneers as part
of the new culture of secularHebrew songs and folk dances (such as the hora)that existed in the
early decades of the Zionist movement.
Herzl’s Problem
With “Hatikvah”
Even as it grew
in popularity, however, not all Zionists favored “Hatikvah” for the movement’s
anthem. Theodor Herzl disliked the song, and in 1897 he
launched the first of several international competitions, all ultimately
unsuccessful, to produce a serious alternative.
One of Herzl’s
objections to “Hatikvah” was the bohemian figure of Imber himself. Despite his
personal charisma, literary talents, and Zionist convictions, Imber was a
perpetual ne’er-do-well, described by one contemporary as “a vagabond, a
drunkard and a Hebrew poet.” In fact, after leaving Palestine, Imber lived in
London and Boston, before dying of alcoholism in abject poverty on New York’s
Lower East Side in 1909, despite repeated efforts by Jewish communal leaders to
help him.
For other early
Zionists, it was not the author of “Hatikvah” but the non-Jewish origin of its
melody that proved objectionable. Many Zionist cultural figures were unnerved
by the song’s strong resemblance to Czech composer Bedřich Smetana’s “Moldau”
section of his 1874 symphonic tone poem, “MáVlast.” In fact, in creating his
own national musical epic for the Czech nation, Smetana had drawn on the same
Moldavian song as a source around the same time that Samuel Cohen did. As a
solution, some Jewish composers wrote new melodies for Imber’s words.
Scholars joined
the fray as well, with some postulating that the “Hatikvah” melody actually
derived from the traditional Hallel liturgy of Sephardic Jews. The early
20th-century scholar Abraham Zvi Idelsohn,
“father of Jewish musicology,” took a different route, arguing that Hatikvah’s
root melody belonged to no one folk song tradition. Instead, he claimed, it
constituted a generic “wandering melody,” common across European cultures
without a distinct national paternity.
Recent
scholarship has elaborated on this idea, isolating a centuries-old melodic
pattern common to many Central European songs, the most famous of which is
Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Of course, “Hatikvah” is far from
unique as a national anthem in sharing its melody with other “foreign” sources.
For instance, the tune of “God Save the Queen” served at various times as
national anthem of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, the
United States, and several German states, along with several other countries,
past and present.
In later years,
“Hatikvah” continued to be a subject of debate. Religious Zionists frequently objected to the putatively
secular character of its lyrics, which do not mention God. As a result, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook composed a parallel poem, “Ha-emunah”
(“The Faith”), which speaks of the “steadfast faith in the return to our holy
land…where we shall serve our God.”
Ironically, socialist Zionists denounced the poem for
its allegedly religious, messianic overtones, owing to the reference to an
ancient biblical promise of Jewish return. In the 1930s, they instead proposed Hayim Nahman Bialik’s
“Birkat ha-am” (“The People’s Blessing”), also known as “Tehezakna,” for its
line, “Strengthen the hands of our brothers renewing the soil of our land…”
Cultural Zionists voiced their objections as well, often criticizing the
minor-key melody as gloomy and depressing, and castigating Imber’s Hebrew style
as heavy-handed and antiquated.
Hope for
Hatikvah
In spite of
these criticisms and challenges (and in some cases because of them), most
Zionists embraced “Hatikvah.” Year after year it was sung at the annual Zionist
congresses and other political events around the world.
In 1933, at the 18th
Zionist Congress, the song was officially adopted as the movement’s anthem
together with the now-familiar blue and white flag. In the 1940s, many
Jews in Europe defiantly sung the song as a gesture of collective hope and
spiritual resistance in the face of the Nazi Holocaust and Stalinist terror.
Yet after the
creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the government declined to recognize
“Hatikvah” as the official state anthem, despite adopting a new flag and coat
of arms as national symbols. Still, “Hatikvah” was openly promoted as the de
facto national anthem and used at all official state occasions.
The traditional
lyrics were also emended to reflect the new historic reality of statehood. Whereas
the original last three lines of the text speak of “the ancient hope to return
to the land of our fathers, to the city where [King] David dwelt,” the new version replaces the
biblical allusion with an emphasis on “the hope of two millennia to be a free
people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
Almost from the
moment of its creation, “Hatikvah” has served as both a beloved anthem
throughout the Jewish world and a subject of political debate. The same pattern
continues today. In recent years, a controversy has occasionally surfaced in
Israeli politics over allegations that the lyrics are unsuitable for a country
with such a sizable non-Jewish minority.
Nevertheless,
“Hatikvah” remains an enduring symbol of Jewish nationhood and Israeli
identity. And in November 2004, over a century after its composition,
“Hatikvah” was officially designated the Israeli national anthem by the Israeli Knesset,
bringing its journey full circle.
Lyrics in
Transliteration and English
The present-day
version of “Hatikvah” is a two-stanza song, whose words speak of the historic
yearning of Jews for a return to the ancient national home in the Land of
Israel.
Kol od baleivav
penimah
Nefesh yehudi homiyah,
Ulfa’atey mizrah kadimah,
Ayin letsiyon tsofiyah;
Nefesh yehudi homiyah,
Ulfa’atey mizrah kadimah,
Ayin letsiyon tsofiyah;
Od lo avdah
tikvateinu,
Hatikvah bat shenot al payim,
Lihyot am hofshi be’artzeinu,
Eretz tziyon veyerushalayim.
Hatikvah bat shenot al payim,
Lihyot am hofshi be’artzeinu,
Eretz tziyon veyerushalayim.
As long as
Jewish spirit
Yearns deep in the heart,
With eyes turned East,
Looking towards Zion.
Yearns deep in the heart,
With eyes turned East,
Looking towards Zion.
Our hope is not
yet lost,
The hope of two millennia,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
The hope of two millennia,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
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