Hatikvah

History

The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naphtali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv (Polish: Złoczów), a city nicknamed "The City of Poets", in Austrian Poland, today part of the Ukraine. In 1882 Imber immigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine and read his poem to the pioneers of the early Jewish colonies - Rishon Lezion, Rehovot, Gedera and Yesud Hama'ala.

Imber's nine-stanza poem, Tikvatenu ("Our Hope"), put into words his thoughts and feelings following the establishment of Petah Tikva (literally "Opening of Hope"). Published in Imber's first book Barkai [The Shining Morning Star], Jerusalem, 1886 , 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 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 reports that the song was spontaneously sung by Czech Jews in the entryway 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 (now renamed the Flag, Coat-of-Arms, and National Anthem 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

The melody for Hatikvah derives from La Mantovana, a 16th-century Italian song, composed by Giuseppe Cenci (Giuseppino del Biado) 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 Ballo di Mantova . This melody gained wide currency in Renaissance Europe, under various titles, such as the Pod Krakowem (in Polish) , Cucuruz cu frunza-n sus [Maize with up-standing leaves] (in Romanian)  and the Kateryna Kucheryava (in Ukrainian) . The melody was used by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana in his set of six symphonic poems celebrating Bohemia, Má vlast ("My homeland"), 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, Carul cu boi [The Ox-Driven Cart] .

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.

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.

Some people compare the first line of the refrain, “Our hope is not yet lost” (“עוד לא אבדה תקוותנו”), to the opening of the Polish national anthem, Poland Is Not Yet Lost (Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła) or the Ukrainian national anthem, Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished (Ще не вмерла Україна; Šče ne vmerla Ukrajina). This line may also be a Biblical allusion to Ezekiel’s "Vision of the Dried Bones" (Ezekiel 37: "…Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost"), 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 official text of Hatikvah is relatively short; indeed it is a single complex sentence, consisting of two clauses: the subordinate clause posits the condition ("As long as… A soul still yearns… And… An eye still watches…"), while the independent clause specifies the outcome ("Our hope is not yet lost… To be a free nation in our land").

Text of Tikvateinu by Naftali Herz Imber

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

Religious objections

Some religious Jews have criticized Hatikvah for its lack of religious emphasis: There is no mention of God or the Torah. One proposal was to switch the word "חופשי" (free, which in modern Hebrew can allude to a secular Jew being free of mitzvot) with the word "קודש" (holy), thus reading the line: "To be a holy nation", referring to the verse in Exodus 19:6 "וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹש" (you shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation).

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote an alternative anthem titled “HaEmunah” ("The Faith") 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 (“Zion and Jerusalem”) 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 enstrangement that it creates between the minority cultural groups of Israel and its religious 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 symbolizes 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.

To conclude from their perspective, the national anthem has become more of a cliché rather than a powerful provocation and therefore doesn’t (always) have to be associated with its negative connotations. With that said, because of the context and the ongoing political situation in the country that the anthem is representing, the disagreement over the history and roots of the country cause Hatikvah to remain as a topic of controversy.

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.