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Hatikvah or Hatikva (Hebrew: הַתִּקְוָה, “The Hope”), sometimes styled HaTikva(h), is the national anthem of the State of Israel. The anthem was written by Naftali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew, and who moved to what was then Palestine in the early 1880s. The anthem's underlying message is about "hope," and the hope of the Zionists that they would someday attain secular independence in the Land of Israel.

History

Historical Background

Writing

The text of Hatikvah was written by the Galician-Jewish poet Naftali Herz Imber in Zolochiv (Ukraine) in 1878 as a nine-stanza poem named Tikvatenu (“Our Hope”). It was supposed to be an expression of his thoughts and feelings following the construction of one of the first Jewish settlements in Israel, Petach Tikva. The poem was subsequently adopted as the anthem of Zionism at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The melody was arranged by Samuel Cohen, an immigrant from Moldavia, from a musical theme in Smetana's Moldau that is partly based on a Scandinavian folk song. The text was later revised by the settlers of Rishon LeZion, subsequently undergoing a number of other changes.

Declaration of the State of Israel

When the State of Israel was declared in 1948, HaTikvah was unofficially proclaimed the national anthem. It did not become the official anthem until until November 2004, when it was sanctioned by the Knesset in an amendment to the “Flag and Coat-of-Arms Law” (now called “The Flag, Coat-of-Arms, and National Anthem Law”).

In its modern rendering, the text of the anthem includes only the first stanza and refrain of the original poem. The most significant element in the additional stanzas (in addition to the hope of returning to Zion, a hope being seen as fulfilled) is the establishment of a sovereign and free nation in Eretz Yisrael.

Music

The melody for Hatikva is based on “La Mantovana,” a 17th century Italian song. Its earliest known appearance in print was in early 17th-century Italy as “Ballo di Mantova.” This melody gained wide currency in Renaissance Europe, being recorded variously as the Spanish hymn “Virgen de la Cueva” (“Virgin of the Cave”), the Yiddish folk song “Prayer for the Dew,” the Polish folk song “Pod Krakowem,” and as the Ukrainian “Kateryna Kucheryava.” In the Czech Republic this melody in major scale is known as the folk song “Kočka leze dírou”; in minor scale, it had been first used by Bedřich Smetana in his symphonic poem “Má vlast” as “Die Moldau.”

The modern adaptation of the music for Hatikvah was most likely composed by Samuel Cohen in 1888. He himself recalled many years later that he had adapted the melody from a Moldavian folk-song, most likely “Carul cu boi” (“Carriage with Oxen”).

Hatikvah is written in a minor key, which is often perceived as mournful in tone and thus rarely used in national anthems. However, as the title (“The Hope”) and the words suggest, the import of the song is uplifting and optimistic in spirit.

Current text

Below is the current text (first stanza and the amended refrain of the original nine-stanza poem) in Hebrew, along with a transliteration and translation (amended lyrics are in bold).

Some people compare the first line of the refrain, “Our hope is not yet lost” (עוד לא אבדה תקותנו), to the opening of the Polish national anthem, Poland Is Not Yet Lost (Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła) or to the Ukrainian national anthem Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished (Ще не вмерла Україна). However, this line is considered to be a Biblical allusion to Ezekiel’s “Vision of the Dried Bones” (Eze 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.

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 has not yet been lost…To be a free nation in our own homeland”).

Religious rejection of Hatikvah

Zev Rosenfeld writes: "Rav Kook zt"l heard Hatikvah, did not care for it, and disagreed with the attitude that it conveyed. ... Rav Kook wrote an alternate poem in direct response to Hatikvah, entitled Ha'Emunah. He hoped that it would ultimately replace Hatikvah as the national anthem...

"It is clear that Imber and Rav Kook zt”l subscribe to two very different outlooks on Zionism. Typical secular Zionists of the late eighteenth century did not attribute any religious aspects to their dream of creating a Zionist movement to return to Eretz Yisrael . They were tired of persecution and anti-Semitism. The only hope was to rely on those courageous individuals who could stand up on their own two feet and breathe life into the dying nation. The only logical place to dream of such a rebirth is the land with common history for all the Jews, Eretz Yisrael. However, if this proved impossible, other options might suffice. This is clearly the message behind Imber's Hatikvah - the last hope for survival."

Original nine-stanza poem

Media

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• Collection of MIDIs
• BBC recording from April, 20 1945 of Jewish survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp five days after their liberation. This was the first Sabbath ceremony conducted openly on German soil since the beginning of the war, with people still dying around them, singing what would become the Israeli national anthem. (MP3 format)
  • Original Site with Newspaper Article (in Hebrew)
• A vocal version, taken from the compilation The Best Israeli Album in the World. (MP3 format)

Links

• Hatikva article from the Jewishvirtuallibrary

• Asian anthems
• National anthems
• Israeli songs
• Hebrew songs
• Passover songs