Hatikvah (also Hatikva, "The Hope") is the national anthem of Israel.

History

The Hatikvah text was written by the Galician poet Naphtali Herz Imber in Jassy (Romania) in 1871 as a nine-stanza poem named Tikavatenu ("Our Hope").

In 1897, at the First Zionist Congress, it became the hymn of Zionism; later it was arranged by the composer Paul Ben-Haim, who based the composition partly on Romanian Jewish folk tunes.

Later the text was edited by the settlers of Rishon LeZion and it underwent a number of other changes until 1948, when the state of Israel was created, and it was proclaimed as the national anthem text of Israel.

In its modern version, the anthem text only has the first stanza and chorus of the original poem. The most important edition in those parts is that the hope is no longer to return to Zion, but to be a free nation in it.

Music

The music, composed probably by Samuel Cohen, is said to be based on a theme from an old Moldavian folk song, "Carul cu boi" ("Cart and Oxen"), which also served as the inspiration for a theme in Bedřich Smetana's "The Moldau" symphonic poem (part of Má Vlast, "My Country").[1] (http://www.hillel.org/Hillel/NewHille.nsf/fcb8259ca861ae57852567d30043ba26/e749c626194910a385256af00060351b/$FILE/hatikvah_navigator.pdf#search='carul%20cu%20boi%20hatikva')

Hatikvah is written in a minor key, one that may seem depressing or mournful to some people. However, as the title ("The Hope") would indicate, the mood of the song is uplifting.

Lyrics

Here is the text in Hebrew with accompanying transliteration and translation in English:

The first line of the chorus, "Our hope is not yet lost" (עוד לא אבדה תקותנו) has been compared to the opening of the Polish national anthem "Poland is not yet lost" (Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła) and similarities between Zionism and the Polish nationalist movement have been pointed out.

External links

• Audio files (http://www.science.co.il/Israel-anthem.asp)