[HANASHIR:14362] Re: Another Hatikvah question

[rahel <rahel...>]

Yeshar Koach!!


Rahel



At 01:32 PM 5/20/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>I have followed only a few of the comments relating to Hatikvah, but thought
>this material might be helpful. It' s stuff I've compiled from a variety of
>sources, most of them in Hebrew, and I use it when I teach Hatikvah.
>
>Enjoy.
>
>Hatikvah was first published in 1886, in the journal "Barkai."  It was
>originally titled "Tikvatienu," which means our hope and was  a reference to
>the community of Petach Tikvah, which had just been founded.  The original
>poem had nine verses, with the verse that we use as the closing ("Od lo
>avdah") as the opening verse.  Imber would travel from community to
>community, declaiming his poetry and making revisions as suggested by people
>he respected.  This is one of the reasons there are different "texts" extant,
>each claiming to be original and correct. It's also one of the reasons there
>are a number of communities in Israel claiming to be "the home of the
>national anthem."
>
>The poem was also initially set to a different tune, one that had a different
>melody for each verse. For obvious reasons, it never caught on and there is
>no manuscript available to reconstruct it in any way.
>
>Hatikvah gained popularity among the Zionists, and at the end of the 4th
>Zionist Congress in London, after the congregated delegates sang "God Save
>the King", they spontaneously burst into Hatikvah. The song's place as the
>anthem of the Zionist movement was solidified at the 6th Zionist Congress, in
>1903, which dealt with the Uganda option. Again, at the end of a bitter
>Congress, the delegates stood and sang Hatikvah and more than anything, that
>established it as the musical embodiment of the Zionist ideal.
>
>As a national anthem, Hatikvah is unique (or almost unique) for the following
>reasons:
>
>a. Hatikvah was written before the establishment of the State of Israel.
>Most anthems are written after the country they symbolize come into being.
>
>b. It was written in Hebrew, but before Hebrew became the official language
>of the State of Israel.  When Hatikvah was written, it was not clear if
>Hebrew would be revived and would survive.
>
>c. It was written outside of Palestine (in Romania).  It echoes Yehuda
>Halevy's poem "My heart is in the east and I am at the edge of the west."
>Again, most national anthems are written within the boundaries of the country
>they symbolize.
>
>(Much has been made of the fact that Hatikvah has never been officially
>"proclaimed" by the Knesset to be Israel's national anthem. I'm less
>impressed: The US Congress didn't formally adopt The Star Spangled Banner
>until 1931.
>
>A close reading of the poem ( as we sing it) reveals that it is written in
>two parts. The first part (Kol od, which is how each verse began in the
>original poem) is the condition. If these conditions are met, then our hope
>will be/can be fulfilled.  What are the conditions?  There are two
>conditions: The first is that as long as each Jew maintains a Jewish soul
>within his/her heart.  This is a general condition, a sense of Jewish
>awareness. The second condition is that each Jew will continue to "look
>eastward" and center themselves on Israel.  (The word in Hebrew for east is
>Biblical--"kedma" it also means forward.).  This condition is far more
>specific, being centered on Israel.  The notion of a conditional arrangement,
>of course, it not new to Judaism, and echoes the brit. the Jewish heart.
>Where else do we find the notion of a contingent vision (conditional
>covenant?)
>
>The second part of the poem describes the hope. What is interesting is that
>the yearning for a return to Zion is an integral part of Jewish religion.
>However, God is not mentioned in the poem .  Imber took a religious value and
>recast it in secular language.  He defines redemption as nationalist hope.
>The specific hope he mentions, of course, is to be a free people in our own
>land.  This raises the existential question (today) of whether we can be free
>without soveriegnty.
>
>The last line refers to Zion and Jerusalem.  While Zion is one of the names
>for Jerusalem, there is a distinction between Zion and the entire land of
>Israel.  Both are required for fulfillment of the dream.
>
>Finally, if you look at the grammar, the first verse is in first person
>singular, the second verse is in first person plural.  The fulfillment of the
>hope of the people is dependent upon the actions of each individual Jew.
>
>In thinking about Hatikvah as Israel's national anthem today, it stands as a
>symbol of a basic tension within Zionist ideology:  Is Israel to be a state
>for the Jews, or a state for all its citizens?
>

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