Hatikva: A Song History

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Hatikva ("The Hope") grew out of "Tikvatenu" ("Our Hope"), a Hebrew poem by Naftali Herz Imber (1856–1909).[1] Sources differ on when and where Imber first wrote it: Loeffler and the Encyclopaedia Judaica give Iași (Jassy), Romania, in 1878, while Seroussi places the first drafts in Iași in 1877 or in Złoczów, Galicia, in 1878, noting that scholars are divided.[1][2][3] The poem first appeared in Barkai, a collection of Imber's verse issued in Jerusalem in 1886.[1][4] Its familiar tune came from Samuel Cohen, a Jewish immigrant from Moldavia who settled in Rishon LeZion and fitted the words to the Moldavian-Romanian song "Carul cu Boi" ("Cart and Oxen"), probably in the late 1880s.[2][3]

Color lithograph of a broad lake seen from a hillside, with a small town on the shore and travelers on a path

David Roberts, Sea of Galilee at Genezareth looking Towards Bashan, color lithograph, 1839. Shown for its landscape; it has no connection to the anthem.

Musicologist Edwin Seroussi describes that tune as a melody type shared by Jews and non-Jews in Moldavia rather than a distinctively Romanian song.[3] Its opening phrase closely resembles the first main theme of Bedřich Smetana's Vltava (The Moldau), from his cycle Má vlast; James Loeffler writes that Smetana drew on the same Moldavian source, while Seroussi finds no direct link beyond a widely shared melody type.[1][3] Seroussi also notes structural likenesses to La Mantovana, a folk melody from northeastern Italy documented since at least 1608, although the musicologist Don Harrán, who examined the resemblance, proposed no chain of transmission between the two.[3]

Sung at several early Zionist Congresses, the song was formally declared the Zionist movement's anthem at the 18th Zionist Congress in Prague in 1933.[2][3] It opened the ceremony declaring the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, yet it became Israel's national anthem by law only on November 10, 2004, through an amendment to the Flag and Coat-of-Arms Law, since renamed to include the anthem.[3][4] Judy House includes it in A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer, a book of Jewish music with every tune in DAD tuning, in both a chord/melody solo and a four-part arrangement.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Hatikva"

Sources

  1. My Jewish Learning (James Loeffler): "How "Hatikvah" (The Hope) Became Israel's National Anthem".
  2. Jewish Virtual Library (Encyclopaedia Judaica, Bathja Bayer): "Ha-Tikvah".
  3. Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University (Edwin Seroussi, Yuval IX, 2015): "Hatikvah: Conceptions, Receptions and Reflections".
  4. TheTorah.com (Dalia Marx): "Tikvatenu: The Poem that Inspired Israel's National Anthem, Hatikva".
  5. Judy House: "A Collection Of Jewish Music For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  6. Image: David Roberts, Sea of Galilee at Genezareth looking Towards Bashan, color lithograph, 1839. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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