hatikvah

[JRJ <JRJ...>]

I'm sure you all know that Imber's poem (with slightly
different words than the ones we sing now) was fitted to a
ubiquitous folksong (it also appears in varied forms in Smetana's
MOLDAU and folksongs from Spain to Poland, Jewish and non-Jewish),
and sung at the early Zionist congresses. It was eventually adopted
as the official Zionist anthem. It took many years after the
founding of the State of Israel for Hatikvah to be officially
proclaimed the national anthem. As with many poems of that era
the syllabic stresses are inconsistent with the standard
pronunciation of Hebrew, making some amusing problems (such as the
CHOF-shi).ccent on the kamats katan in chof-shi
Joshua R. Jacobson
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115
JRJ (at) neu(dot)edu