Hatikvah


"Hatikvah" is a 19th-century Jewish poem and the national anthem of Israel. The theme of the romantic composition reflects the Jews' 2,000-year-old hope of returning to the Land of Israel, restoring it, and reclaiming it as a free and sovereign nation. Its lyrics are adapted from a poem by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów, which was then in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria under Austrian rule. Imber wrote the first version of the poem in 1877, while he was a guest of a Jewish scholar in Iași, Romania.

History

The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv, a city nicknamed "The City of Poets", then in Austrian Poland, today in Ukraine. In 1882 Imber immigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine and read his poem to the pioneers of the early Jewish villages—Rishon Lezion, Rehovot, Gedera, and Yesud Hama'ala.
Imber's nine-stanza poem, Tikvatenu, put into words his thoughts and feelings following the establishment of Petah Tikva. Published in Imber's first book, the poem was subsequently adopted as an anthem by the Hovevei Zion and later by the Zionist Movement at the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

Before the establishment of the State of Israel

Hatikvah was chosen as the organisational anthem of the First Zionist Congress in 1897.
The British Mandate government briefly banned its public performance and broadcast from 1919, in response to an increase in Arab anti-Zionist political activity.
A former member of the Sonderkommando reported that the song was spontaneously sung by Czech Jews at the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chamber in 1944. While singing they were beaten by Waffen-SS guards.

Adoption as national anthem

When the State of Israel was established in 1948, "Hatikvah" was unofficially proclaimed the national anthem. It did not officially become the national anthem until November 2004, when an abbreviated and edited version was sanctioned by the Knesset in an amendment to the Flag and Coat-of-Arms Law.
In its modern rendering, the official text of the anthem incorporates only the first stanza and refrain of the original poem. The predominant theme in the remaining stanzas is the establishment of a sovereign and free nation in the Land of Israel, a hope largely seen as fulfilled with the founding of the State of Israel.

Music

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The melody for "Hatikvah" derives from "La Mantovana", a 16th-century Italian song, composed by Giuseppe Cenci ca. 1600 with the text "Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi da questo cielo". Its earliest known appearance in print was in the del Biado's collection of madrigals. It was later known in early 17th-century Italy as. This melody gained wide currency in Renaissance Europe, under various titles, such as the, and the. It also served as a basis for a number of folk songs throughout Central Europe, for example the popular Slovenian children song. The melody was used by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana in his set of six symphonic poems celebrating Bohemia, "Má vlast", namely in the second poem named after the river which flows through Prague, Vltava; the piece is also known under its German title as Die Moldau.
The adaptation of the music for "Hatikvah" was set by Samuel Cohen in 1888. Cohen himself recalled many years later that he had hummed Hatikvah based on the melody from the song he had heard in Romania,.
The harmony of "Hatikvah" follows a minor scale, which is often perceived as mournful in tone and is uncommon in national anthems. As the title "The Hope" and the words suggest, the import of the song is optimistic and the overall spirit uplifting.

Use in sporting events

The Israeli national anthem is used in several European sporting events since the Arab states barred Israel from participating in their own continent's sporting bodies. In October 2017, after judoka Tal Flicker won gold in the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam in the United Arab Emirates, officials played the International Judo Federation anthem instead of "Hatikvah" which Flicker sang privately.

Use in film

American composer John Williams adapted Hatikvah in 2005 historical drama film Munich.

Official text

The official text of the national anthem corresponds to the first stanza and amended refrain of the original nine-stanza poem by Naftali Herz Imber. Along with the original Hebrew, the corresponding transliteration and English translation are listed below.

Hebrew lyrics

Arabic

English translation

Some people compare the first line of the refrain, “Our hope is not yet lost”, to the opening of the Polish national anthem, Poland Is Not Yet Lost or the Ukrainian national anthem, Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished. This line may also be a Biblical allusion to Ezekiel’s "Vision of the Dried Bones", describing the despair of the Jewish people in exile, and God's promise to redeem them and lead them back to the Land of Israel. The phrase אבדה תקותנו appears identically in both.
The official text of Hatikvah is relatively short; indeed it is a single complex sentence, consisting of two clauses: the subordinate clause posits the condition, while the independent clause specifies the outcome.

Text of Tikvatenu

Below is the full text of the nine-stanza poem Tikvatenu by Naftali Herz Imber. The current version of the Israeli national anthem corresponds to the first stanza of this poem and the amended refrain.

Alternate proposals and objections

Objections by religious Jews

Some religious Jews have criticised "Hatikvah" for its lack of religious emphasis: There is no mention of God or the Torah.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote an alternative anthem titled "HaEmunah" which he proposed as a replacement for "Hatikvah". But he did not object to the singing of "Hatikvah", and in fact endorsed it.

Objections by non-Jewish Israelis

Liberalism and the Right to Culture, written by Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal, provides a social scientific perspective on the cultural dynamics in Israel, a country that is a vital home to many diverse religious groups. More specifically, Margalit and Halbertal cover the various responses towards "Hatikvah", which they establish as the original anthem of a Zionist movement, one that holds a two thousand year long hope of returning to the homeland after a long period of exile.
To introduce the controversy of Israel's national anthem, the authors provide two instances where "Hatikvah" is rejected for the estrangement that it creates between the minority cultural groups of Israel and its national Jewish politics. Those that object find trouble in the mere fact that the national anthem is exclusively Jewish while a significant proportion of the state's citizenry is not Jewish and lacks any connection to the anthem's content and implications.
As Margalit and Halbertal continue to discuss, "Hatikvah" symbolises for many Arab-Israelis the struggle of loyalty that comes with having to dedicate oneself to either their historical or religious identity.
Specifically, Arab Israelis object to "Hatikvah" due to its explicit allusions to Jewishness. In particular, the text's reference to the yearnings of "a Jewish soul" is often cited as preventing non-Jews from personally identifying with the anthem. In 2001, Saleh Tarif, the first non-Jew appointed to the Israeli cabinet in Israel's history, refused to sing "Hatikvah". Ghaleb Majadale, who in January 2007 became the first Muslim to be appointed as a minister in the Israeli cabinet, sparked a controversy when he publicly refused to sing the anthem, stating that the song was written for Jews only. In 2012, Salim Joubran, an Israeli Arab justice on Israel's Supreme Court, did not join in singing "Hatikvah" during a ceremony honoring the retirement of the court's chief justice, Dorit Beinisch.
From time to time proposals have been made to change the national anthem or to modify the text in order to make it more acceptable to non-Jewish Israelis. To date no such proposals have succeeded in gaining broad support.