Koolulam: Startup Nation meets Secular Prayer

One place to start this story would be the dark years of the 2^nd Intifada, when Israelis tried to leave their homes as little as possible because visiting supermarkets, riding busses and walking down the street were all life-threatening activities. Jerusalem was perhaps worst-hit of all, and people from the rest of the country stopped coming. Then, as the security forces figured out how to block the suicide murderers, life slowly returned to normal. In Jerusalem a new phenomenon appeared, with thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of regular Israelis traveling there on the hot summer nights of August and September to participate in tours of old neighborhoods, synagogues, then finishing late at night at the large open square in front of the Western Wall, the Kotel. The highpoint of these pilgrimages are the final nights before Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar; in recent years the number of people cramming onto that square easily surpasses a quarter million each night, and their cumulative number exceeds 1.5 million. Once they're there, they sing slichot – medieval texts asking God's forgiveness. All together. Like this.

In early 2017 Or Teicher, a secular Israeli producer, saw that clip and wondered if he could bring together ordinary Israelis, strangers to each other, and get them to sing together with some sort of fervor. So he tried. He collected some talented people around him, they collected 400 people in Tel Aviv, and on April 15^th 2017 they sung together. Here, watch them:

On September 7^th 2017, as the Jewish High Holidays approached, they collected 600 people in Jerusalem. Their technique was getting better, and it was a smashing success:

On December 17^th 2017 they gathered 600 mostly secular Israelis in Tel Aviv and sang about believing, in English. Another roaring success.

There's logistics in there, and organizational ability on multiple levels. There's musical creativity in spades. The cameras turn a crowd into a sea of identifiable and fascinating people with faces. And of course, there's that astonishingly charismatic young man with the dreadlocks who pulls everyone into a seamless many-layered choir in a single hour, even as most of them have never previously sung a single chord with the others. So they upped their ante. On Jan. 1^st 2018, they organized 2,000 people in a gigantic tent in Tel Aviv, and proved the model worked with larger numbers, too.

On February 14^th 2018 they pulled together 3,000 people in Haifa, and sang Matisyahu's One Day in three languages, Arabic English and Hebrew. If you haven't been paying attention, concentrate on the faces, their diversity, and of course, their intensity:
   

Later that week was International Women's Day, so they had an event by and for women only, 2,000 of them. The endlessly energetic Ben Yeffet, not being a woman, wasn't there. They all had a great time.
  

They have no website, if you're wondering, and no swanky marketing operation. They're propelled by the excitement they're generating, as ever broader swathes of Israeli society take notice of this new cultural phenomenon sprouting among us; they announce their next events on a Facebook page.

On April 2^nd 2018 they tried something new, with 7,500 people singing simultaneously in five different cities: Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Dimona, Rishon Lezion, and Kiryat Motzkin. The genius was adding Kiryat Motzkin, a scruffy town no-one has ever even heard of unless they live there; it turns out the locals know how to sing as well as everyone else.

Then they turned deeply serious. For Yom Hashoah in April 2018 they collected dozens of Holocaust survivors and three generations of their descendants, and together they prayed Ofra Haza's song I'm Alive. If you can watch this one without being moved to tears, you're a lost case.

This week (April 16^th 2018) they unveiled their largest event so far: 12,000 people, joined by Israel's President Reuven Rivlin, singing Naomi Shemer's immortal paean to the beauty and wonder of this flawed land we live in. If this isn't a new form of mass devotion, I don't know what might be.
 

A Hassidic athiest Chabad socialist folk song

One of the notable sections of the service on the evening of Yom Kippur is Kachomer Beyad Hayotzer, Like clay in the hands of a creator. After the service this week our Rabbi, Rav Benny Lau, told us the startling tale of the melody and its second career. Anyone who knows Israeli culture and has gone to an Ashkenazi synagogue on Yom Kippur ought to have noticed it; but I don't know many folks who have. I certainly hadn't.

Kachomer seems to have been written - words and melody - by Shalom Charitonow, a Chabbadnik in the early 19th century. Or not. I've seen different versions (the Internet can be a confusing place) as to whether Charitonow wrote the words, or perhaps merely the melody, and then the two were connected only in the 20th century in Israel. In any case, they've been connected for decades, if not centuries.

Charitonow lived in Nikolayev, a shtetel in what today is the Ukraine. Many years later another young Jew from Nikolayev, Emanuel Novograbelski, was about to be sent to exile in Siberia for his Zionist leanings, but instead was exchanged with the British for some Russians who'd been arrested in Manadtory Palestine; so in the mid 1920s he arrived here and joined the pioneers. He even joined the Labor Brigades for a while until his health forced him to be a city-dweller. Even then, however, he joined the Haganah, and the events of Summer 1929 found him serving with his unit in Tel Aviv. And that's where he was when news of the birth of his first son reached him.

Flushed with the personal excitement of being a new father, and the national tension of the first major round of Jewish-Palestinian violence, Emanuel, who by now was mostly known by his pen name Emanuel the Russian (because he wasn't one?) wrote a lullaby for his son: Sleep son, your mother is with you, tomorrow there's lots of work to be done, the fields at Beit Alpha are burning, one must never never succumb to despair, sleep son sleep son sleep. Lacking the time to compose a melody, he borrowed a niggun from the Old Country.

And ever since the tune has had two separate lives. If you're aware of the Israeli cannon of songs, Shirim Ivri'im, you'll know Shchav bni - rest, my son, as an early part of the culture. If you've ever gone to an Ashkenasi shul for Kol Nidrei evening, irrespective of Hassidic or Misnagdic, you'll know Kachomer Beyad Hayotzer. And if you're both (some of us are), you'll recognize both, but never both at the same time. Or rather, both as being the same thing.

Here's the melody:



Here's Arik Lavie, an important performer of cannonical songs, demonstrating how basic this one is:

 Here's a band of chabadnicks doing it the Chabad way:

Here's Aya Corem, demonstrating that young contemporary singers still hold the early parts of the cannon to be their own.



 Finally, here's someone who definitely knows the whole story: secular, cannonic, creative, and deeply connected Chava Alberstein, tying it all together.

Yom Hazikaron - commemorating Israel's fallen

It's Yom Hazikaron again. The second holiest day of the year, in my book, second only to Yom Kippur. Independence Day, tomorrow evening, is perhaps more important for its historical stature, but Yom Hazikaron is easily holier.

I'm reading Yuval Noah Harrari's fun book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, about which I may write sometime soon. One of his central ideas is that humankind is what it is because of its ability to tell itself stories and thereby create imagined realities which have no objective existence, such as the Catholic Church or the United Nations, and compelling ideas such as banks and human rights. He's a compelling storyteller himself, is Yuval. Having grown up in Israel, he would immediately recognize the power of Yom Hazikaron and everything it connects to, and would appreciate its centrality in organizing the world for Israelis.

The second most popular post I ever wrote here on this blog was the introduction to the Shirim Ivri'im series. (The most popular of all, sadly, was my dissection of that idiotic series of four maps which lies about the history of Israel and Palestine).

On this Yom Hazikaron I'm offering a random but chronological series of the songs with which Israelis come together and mourn.

Fania Bergman, Nigunim (Melodies). Bergman was born in what is now Poland in 1908, and spent her childhood dodging the calamities of the early 20th century in Eastern Europe. In 1930 she made aliya and joined a recently founded kibbutz, Gvat. She worked on the kibbutz as long as her failing health allowed, dying in 1950. She left behind a son, Giora, and many children songs which are taught to schoolchildren till this day. Nigunim, however, isn't for children, it's more about being a child. Written in 1944 and directed to her parents (who by then were already dead in the Holocaust), she tells how, try as she may to be a new sort of Jew in a new sort of life, the melodies they inculcated in her can never be erased, and indeed, they create a bridge from her to them over the impassable chasm.



Fania's only son Giora was killed in the Six Day War.

Speaking of the Six Day War, here's one of its quirkier songs: Jerusalem of Iron and of Lead and of Bereavement. It was written by one of the paratroopers, right after the battle for Jerusalem, who went on to become one of Israel's most original and unusual songwriters, Meir Ariel. The melody and structure are a copy of Naomi Shemer's Jerusalem of Gold, except that, as Ariel says in his song, Jerusalem is only mostly of gold.


40 years after the Six Day War Erez Stark wrote a poem for himself: Nothing Will harm Me. Stark was a soldier, and in his poem he promises that nothing will happen to him, he's promised his brother, his sister, his parents, his father keeps on saying "if anything happens to you what reason will I have to live" so he's promised nothing will ever happen to him, and if you're all standing around my grave I guess I didn't keep my promise and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Erez was killed in 1997 in Southern Lebanon.


Finally, here's Ariel Horowitz's "20,000 brothers", from 2014. Sean Carmeli was killed in Gaza that summer, and when word went out that he had made aliya alone and didn't have family in Israel, the soccer team he'd been a fan of called on all the other fans to come to his funeral. His two sisters flew in from Texas, and thus the refrain "two sisters and 20,000 brothers, and you're in front". I suppose it's not great music, and the lyrics are spontaneous, not poetry, but you need to listen to them while watching the film. That will do it for you.

Mishehu Pa'am, Someone Once

In the coming months you'll be hearing even more than previously about nationalist, chauvinist, nigh-fascist and of course extreme far-right Israel and its ghastly government and policies. Since I'm forbidden to deal with overtly poitical issues, I won't be required to pontificate about any or it. To be honest, I don't even expect to spend much time listening to the cacaphony, nor worrying about it. I'm too busy, at work and in life, and am slowly weaning myself from decades of political junkie-ism. It's not that I no longer care, but I'm learning to control my need for a permanent stream of poitical data. Better to wait a bit and think, rather than inbibe limitless quantities.

(Followers of my Twitter account will have noticed that I'm much less active than previously. About two months ago I experimentally deleted it from by mobile phone, and have never looked back.)

So here's an installment in the Shirim Ivri'im thread that was once popular on this blog. (Explanation here and here). I present it because it's an interesting shir, but mostly because it's from one of the many parts of Israeli life which aren't about the stuff you get from the media.

Ivri Lider Is a talented and popular writer and preformer of Hebrew songs. Here's his website. The piece is called Mishehu Pa'am, Someone once. It has nine stanzas, eight of which begin with the line Mishehu pa'am ahav oti kacha, which seems a straightforward sentence until you look closely. It means someone once loved me this way. Or perhaps loved me as I am. Or loved me in the way I'm about to tell. Or even, possibly, someone once loved me in spite of (our difference in age, or our incompatability, or the sheer recklesness of it all, or...)

Not a bad trick, to have more than seven or eight possible meanings to a three-word half-sentence. Upon reflection, even the first unequivoal two words, Mishehu paam, aren't that unequivocal. They mean a man once loved me, a woman (the gender formultion is clear). Or do they? Lider is unabashed about his homosexuality, and his voice is a bit feminine. So who is he really talking about?

The first seven stanzas describe the evolving relationship they once had, in which the un-named Someone pursued Me intensely and in spite of all obstacles, and it was nice, and powerful, and wonderful, and complicated, and painful. The eighth stanza says "so somone once left me kacha and got on a plane and went to live his full life elsewhere". Which brings us to the final, subdued and sad stanza, about someone who once loved me kacha and played me Mozart from old records, but I wasn't listening to the music...

Now watch the official Youtube version. It has been watched two and a half million times, mostly by Hebrew spearkers I assume, so the number is all the more impressive, though it really does speak for itself in a universal language. And remind yourself how silly those media reports are, how narrow-minded and blinkered.

The grandchildren of '73

Yom Hazikaron, Memorial Day for more than 23,000 Israelis killed in the wars. One of the most meaningful days of the year. A central part of it is listening to hours of Shirim Ivri'im in minor keys which flood all the media channels.

One of the most important shirim (songs is an inadequate translation) is "The Children of '73". It is sung by a group of soldiers who were conceived in the dark months after the Yom Kippur War ("the winter of '73") to shellshocked fathers and relieved mothers clinging to each other in mourning. You promised us no more wars, sing the soldiers, and you promised us peace. You promised we'd not need to be soldiers. Well, we're young men and women ourselves now, and we're soldiers, and you needn't worry. We're strong, and we can shoulder the burden.




Do the maths. Those soldiers concieved in the winter of '73 are the parents of today's soldiers. The ones who were killed in last year's war.

Idan Reichel at Cesarea

It's been a long time since I did a "Shirim Ivri'im" post. (The thread was introduced here, and the whole series is tagged with the "shirim I'vri'im" lable). Well, last week we went to hear Idan Reichel, easily one of Israel's most talented and popular musicians, at Cesarea, where there's an open-air theatre built by the Romans about 2,000 years ago. I don't know how large the crowd was - five thousand, perhaps. There were grade-school kids there, and retirees, and everyone in between. Reichel and his group pun on a wonderful show as usual with him, the music was very diverse. Here's an i-phone recording by someone who was seated close to the stage. The quality isn't particularly good, soory, but if you listen carefully you'll see that, yes, the lyrics and the music are... Arabic.

Israeli society is more complicated than it's made out to be.




 One of the more touching songs was Maya Avrahams rendition of Ya Mama. However, since I can't find a Youtube version of reasonable quality, here's a recording of the same popular song by Shimon Buskila.

Yes, also Arabic.
 

And since we're on the topic of Reichel's multi-lingual recordings, here's one of the most famous of all

David Grossman and Yehuda Poliker: Short Spring

David Grossman has written a poem about his son Uri, who was killed in Lebanon in 2006. Yehuda Poliker, son of two Holocaust survivors who has written and recorded songs about his nephew Kobi, who was killed as an IDF soldier, put Grossmans poem to music and recorded it. Here it is, along with the lyrics. (Hebrew). The title: Spring is so Short Around Here

There's a short moment of Spring between Winter and summer when everything blooms, but the signs of its end are written into it.

Unetanneh Tokef

I've written in the past about Unetanneh Tokef, perhaps the single most powerful prayer of the High Holidays (but not for any lack of competition). The prayer was probably written in the Galilee in the Byzantine era; it's earliest copy comes from the Cairo Geniza.

A 13th century story tells how R. Amnon of Magenza (=Mainz) was tortured to death for refusing to convert to Christianity, and died as he was reciting Netanneh Tokef; whether the story is true or not I can't say, but it's old, it reflects real conditions in medieval Europe, and if one had the strength to die reciting a prayer this would be as good as any.

The Hebrew text, an English translation and analysis can all be found here.

At 1:50 pm on Yom Kippur of 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, and the Yom Kippur War began. Like 9/11, or Kennedy's assassination, it was a moment in time no-one ever forgets; the war was the second most bloody of our many chapters of conflict, exceeded in bloodiness only by the war of 1947-49.

Kibbutz Beit Hashita in the Jezereel Valley, a community of a few hundred families, lost 11 of its men, the highest proportion of casualties in any Israeli town in that war. In spite of being a very secular, left-leaning kibbutz, when the kibbutzniks commissioned Yair Rosenblum to write them a commemorative text he simply put Unetanneh Tokef to music, combining various styles of Israeli music. The most famous recording is by Hanoch Albalek, a member of the kibbutz. It has long since become a nationally recognized version.

By way of closing the circle, one might add that Beit Hashita is near Beit Alfa, the site of a magnificent Byzantine-era synagogue, so perhaps the anonymous author of the original prayer lived close nearby; in any case he couldn't have been very far away, given the size of the Galilee.

The Fourth and Final Twice Prophetic Song

There have been, and still are, many important creators of shirim Ivri'im, men and women whose names appear over and over in the annals of these songs. None are as central as Naomi Shemer. My thesis in this short series has been that unlike anyone else, she had the ability to offer us a shir around which we could come together at traumatic moments, even though she couldn't have known they were about to come. Yerushalayim Shel Zahav was the first and historically the most astonishing; Lu Yehi was the most healing at one of our moments of greatest need; Al Kol Ele offered a common place to weep when most of us agreed on the need but on little else.

Were I to hazard a guess I'd say the first is the one most likely to last, either because it will reverberate long after peace comes to Jerusalem, or because it will express regret for the second tearing apart of the city once that happens. The two probably contradict each other.

Naomi Shemer's final prophetic song took a quarter of a century to germinate, and became both a prophetic personal elegy and an expression of Israel's never-ending war for its existence. It was written long ago, in 1979, apparently at a moment when Shemer thought she might be dying, and it mourns a death that happens in the month of Tamuz, or early summer. It is sad to die in the month of Tamuz, when the peaches are plentiful - but in Tamuz I will die.

She didn't, fortunately. But eventually, in 2004, she did, just as she had said; that's when her cancer took her. The shir had been around all the intervening years, of course, but now it was suddenly true: she had known.

Then in 2006, again in the summer, we had another war, and the song about dying in Tamuz was so obviously right: just right. Four years ago this month.

Hebrew words
English words
It's sad to die in mid-Tammuz
summer flags are carried to and fro
on the ship's mast, noisy line and it won't stop
for on your summer and harvest, hurrahs fell

It's sad to die in mid-Tammuz
exactly when the peaches are plentiful
and just as all the fruit laughs in the basket
and on your summer and harvest, hurrahs fell

It's sad to die in mid-Tammuz
but/now in mid-Tammuz I shall die
to the fruit gardens that were orphaned
hurrahs afer hurrahs will surely fall
and on your summer and harvest and on everything

It's sad to die in mid-Tammuz

Here's a recording by Nurit Galron, the song's original and most famous singer; the images are all of Naomi Shemer or of her beloved kibbutz of Kineret, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Naomi Shemer: The Third Prophetic Song

A while ago I wrote about Naomi Shemer's first prophetic song, and then I followed up with a post about her second prophetic song. Tomorrow I hope to write about the fourth prophetic song, but for that I ought first to tell about the third.

In 1967 Shemer foresaw the liberation of Jerusalem. In 1973 she wrote what became the anthem of the Yom Kippur War. In 1980 she did it again, perhaps this time slightly consciously, with Al Kol Ele, For All These Things, another elegaic shir about life and how it can slip away.

There was no way she could have foreseen the events of 1967, or 1973. The events of early 1982, however, were planned in advance: Israel was to uproot thousands of settlers in the Yamit area to the west of Gaza, and a few hundred near the southern tip of Sinai, so that those areas would revert to Egyptian control as part of the peace treaty signed in 1978, and re-affirmed in the elections of 1981. Al Kol Ele never mentions the approaching disbanding - yea, destruction - of the settlements, but she may have had them in mind when she wrote
Save the houses that we live in
The small fences and the wall
From the sudden war-like thunder
May you save them all.

For those of us who dreaded the moment of destruction but felt it had to happen, there was of course a profound irony in the refrain she chose: Don't uproot what has been planted, al na ta'akor natua, since it's a direct allusion to Ecclesiastes chapter 2, which of course says the opposite:
¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Still, in the run-up to the destruction of Yamit, Noami Shemer's shir was the rallying cry of those who didn't want it to happen, and a reminder to those of us who did, that peace would come at a real price, especially to those who would be uprooted - a sentiment that's hard to imagine today: can anyone conceive of our present day left empathizing with settlers as they leave their settlements? On that level, Shemer's shir has long lost its prophetic power.

Hebrew words

English translation

Every bee that brings the honey
Needs a sting to be complete
And we all must learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.

Keep, oh Lord, the fire burning
Through the night and through the day
For the man who is returning
from so far away. Chorus:
Don't uproot what has been planted
So our bounty may increase
Let our dearest wish be granted:
Bring us peace, oh bring us peace.

For the sake of all these things, Lord,
Let your mercy be complete
Bless the sting and bless the honey
Bless the bitter and the sweet.


Save the houses that we live in
The small fences and the wall
From the sudden war-like thunder
May you save them all.

Guard what little I’ve been given
Guard the hill my child might climb
Let the fruit that’s yet to ripen
Not be plucked before its time.


Chorus:

As the wind makes rustling night sounds
And a star falls in its arc
All my dreams and my desires
Form crystal shapes out of the dark.

Guard for me, oh Lord, these treasures
All my friends keep safe and strong,
Guard the stillness, guard the weeping,
And above all, guard this song. Chorus:
For the sake of all these things, Lord,
Let your mercy be complete
Bless the sting and bless the honey
Bless the bitter and the sweet. Bless the sting and bless the honey
Bless the bitter and the sweet.

The song has been recorded at least 16 times since 1980. Here's the first,and most famous recording, by Yossie Bannai (1932-2006)

Shir Eretz - Poem of the Land

Natan Yonatan was born in Kiev in 1923, and came to Mandatory Palestine in 1925. His writing, written between 1940 and his death in 2004, straddles the line between poetry and song lyrics, and I'm not to exert to say how one knows the difference. About 200 of his poems became Shirim.

His oldest son, Lior, was killed in the Yom Kippur War.

Shir Eretz tells of the love for the land, and its price.

Hebrew lyrics
English translation:
A land which eats its residents
and flows with milk and honey and the blue sky
somethimes even it itself plunders
sheep of the poor.

A land sweetened by its clods
and all its shores are salty as weeping
that gave it its lovers
all that they could give.

The white sqill/sea onion comes back to bloom
there on the single road
and the jasmine will bring back the scent
of its lost fields of time.

A land sweetened...

All of spring its ragworts return
to cover all the wrinkles of its face
the summer wind will be stroke its rocks' sadness
in the light.

The autumn returns with the weight of its clouds
to cover in gray all of its gardens
and the winter will close all those whom
its weeping eyes watch over.

Sasha Argov wrote the music. Here's Chava Alberstein singing Shir Eretz

And here's Ora Zitner

Here's a recent recording, by Marina Maximilian Blumin. The best shirim never die, they just get recorded again. Marina was born 13 years after Lior was killed; she came from the Ukraine, just like Natan Yonatan.

Naomi Shemer: The Second Prophetic Song

(New readers may wish to find an explanation of this Shirim Ivri'im thread here)

Israel has had its shares of ups and downs. Mood-wise, we're in a bit of a down right now, but since much of the reality doesn't support this, we'll probably kick out of it sooner or later.

The most prolonged "down" period I can remember went on for the better part of two decades, in the 1970s and 1980s. We had wars, hyper-inflation, serious international isolation on an order of magnitude worse than what we've got now, and lots of other tzores. True, there was a moment in 1977-78 when we made peace with Egypt and things looked good, but it didn't last. Eventually a combination of things came together, and things got better: the economy recovered and eventually returned to boom. The Soviet Union, a sworn enemy, collapsed; well more than a million Jews arrived from it's rubble. For a while it even looked like we were headed towards peace, hard as that is to imagine these days.

The long trough of the 70s began at 1:50 PM on October 6th, 1973, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. Until ten minutes earlier Israel had been living seven years of post-Six-Day-War euphoria; the trauma of the Yom Kippur War lasted, the way I see it, until the early 1990s. The euphoria had been misguided, and looking back it was a bit peculiar even at the time. The trauma, as sometimes happens, was worse than it needed to be, and while its first months were justified, its longevity probably wasn't. That's all hindsight, however. In October 1973, or March 1974, things looked grim indeed, and the depth of the fall made it all worse.

All the more astonishing that Naomi Shemer saw it coming.

As I wrote here, Naomi Shemer had already written a prophetic song, Jerusalem of Gold. In late summer 1973 she wrote another one, Lu Yehi, If Only It Could Be. She had it recorded by an unlikely group for such a profound song, the Gashash HaChiver, three jokers who kept Israelis laughing non-stop from the early 1960s until the late 1980s. The Gashash (no, I can't translate what their name means, since it doesn't) were also talented singers, but since they were so funny no-one noticed. There must be a reason they recorded Lu Yehi but I can't say what it was; when it first came out in September 1973 no-one much noticed.

Then in October we were suddenly in this painful war, first losing confidence in the IDF, then losing 2,500 fighters, then losing confidence in the government and the establishment, then facing a Europe eager to throw us to the sharks in its haste to have us pay any price to make the Arab oil crises go away - hard times. There were lots of lyricists and singers who rushed to record shirim to bolster our spirits; most of them probably hope we've forgotten their efforts, which included idiotic attempts such as "I promise you, little girl, that this will be the last war" and the even worse "Send clean underwear, we're fighting like lions, morale is sky high".

Lu Yehi was the obvious anthem of the times, even though it wasn't about them at all - or was it? Hard to know when you're dealing with prophecy. Since Naomi Shemer later wrote another two prophetic songs, who's to say this one was coincidence, or mere luck?

Hebrew lyrics
English:

There is still a white sail on the horizon
Opposite a heavy black cloud
All that we ask for - may it be

And if in the evening windows
The light of the holiday candles flickers
All that we seek - may it be

May it be, may it be - Please - may it be
All that we seek - may it be.

What is the sound that I hear
The cry of the shofar and the sound of drums
All that we ask for - may it be

If only there can be heard within all this
One prayer from my lips also
All that we seek - may it be

May it be...

Within a small, shaded neighborhood
Is a small house with a red roof
All that we ask for, may it be

This is the end of summer, the end of the path
Allow them to return safely here
All that we seek, may it be

May it be...

And if suddenly, rising from the darkness
Over our heads, the light of a star shines
All that we ask for, may it be

Then grant tranquility and also grant strength
To all those we love
All that we seek, may it be

May it be...

This You Tube recording is by the Gashash, but more than 20 years later, sometime after 1995.

Remembering Jerusalem

As I've often said, what's significant about the many mentions of Jerusalem in the Bible isn't how many of them there are, but how the Jews never stopped reading them (except when they already knew them by heart). Sometime this plays out in interesting ways. Take the 137th Psalm, for example:

¹By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

²We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

³For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

⁴How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

⁵If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

⁶If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

⁷Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.

⁸O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.

⁹Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones

(King James translation. The best).

The first passages have become cultural icons; the last two are rarely recited - and it's better so.

Here's a modern shir forged from the 5-6th verses, performed by Yaacov Shweiki

Here's another version, being applied to a very profane context: a victorious Beitar Yerusahlayim, our magnificent hometown team. But that's part of the point, isn't it: Beitar's fans sing a psalm to celebrate their team. I'll bet Manchester United fans can't do that.


Then, in this one film, we've got the opposite application. From time immemorial Jews have crowned perhaps their greatest celebration, the wedding, with an act of mourning for the destroyed city of Jerusalem, by breaking a glass. The counterpart is that they console the bereaved with the wish that they'll find consolation in the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Here you can see a fellow singing the psalm at his own wedding, just before he breaks the glass.

Ammunition Hill

According to the Jewish calender, tomorrow will be the 43rd anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem. Which means that tonight is the 43rd anniversary of the battle on Givat Hatachmoshet, Ammunition Hill.

Between 1949 and 1967, while Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, there was an Israeli enclave about a mile to the east of the border, in the Jordanian part of town. This was Mount Scopus, with the campus of the Hebrew university and Haddassh hospital. There was an agreement whereby every two weeks 200 Israelis would cross Jordanian territory to the enclave, and sit there until the next group replaced them two weeks later.

Throughout the whole period everyone knew that sooner or later the war would resume, and that when that happened Israel would try to reconnect the mountain with the city. To prevent this the Jordanians built a series of fortifications in that mile, and its centerpiece was Amunition Hill, an apt name borrowed from the days after the British conquered the city in 1917 and General Allenby stored his army's ammunition there.

The picture shows the 1949 lines, to which I've marked Ammunition Hill in red, and just for the context, Shaikh Jarrah in green. From the one to the other would be a four minute walk if it weren't for the highway of route 1 which takes some time to cross.

On the night between June 5th and 6th 1967 the paratroopers, backed by a few tanks, made their attack, directly on the Jordanian fortifications. The section of the battle on Ammunition Hill raged from about 2am to 5:30, early next morning. It was face to face combat, between the best forces each side had. 71 Jordanians were killed, and 35 Israelis: most of the defenders died, as did a quarter of the attackers.

A story I heard not long afterward told that in the early morning the IDF troops gathered the fallen Jordanians into a pit and covered it, with a makeshift sign that read "Here lie 71 brave Jordanian soldiers".

A few hours later the paratroopers were at the Kotel.

In 1968 the military band of Central Command (Pikud Merkaz) recorded a song about the battle. It's not the best music we've got, and the lyrics are more dramatic than profound, but it has stuck in the communal memory and everyone can sing its refrain and snatches of the story. The final narrative line: "I don't know why I was given a medal, all I wanted to do was to get home in one piece" has acquired mythical stature, though often overlaid with irony and irreverence.

Hebrew lyrics
English translation
"It was then the morning of the second day of the war in Jerusalem. The horizon paled in the east. We were at the climax of the battle on Ammunition Hill. We'd been fighting there for three hours. A fierce battle was under way. Fatal. The Jordanians fought stubbornly. It was a position fortified in an exceptional manner. At a certain point in the fight there remained next to me only four soldiers. We went up there with a force of two platoons. I didn't know where the others were because the connection with Dudik, the platoon commander, was cut off still at the beginning of the battle. At that moment I thought that everyone had been killed."

At two, two-thirty
We entered through the stony terrain
To the field of fire and mines
Of Ammunition Hill

Against bunkers which were fortified
And 120mm mortars
A hundred and some boys
On Ammunition Hill

The pillar of dawn had not yet risen
Half a platoon lay in blood
But we were already there at least
On Ammunition Hill

Among the walls and the mines
We left only the medics
And we ran ahead without our senses
Towards Ammunition Hill

"At that same moment a grenade was thrown from outside. Miraculously we weren't hit. I was afraid the Jordanians would throw more grenades. Someone had to run from above and cover. I didn't have time to ask who would volunteer. I sent Eitan. Eitan didn't hesitate for a moment. He climbed up and began to fire his machine gun. Sometimes he would overtake me and I'd have to yell to him to remain in line with me. That's how we crossed some 30 meters. Eitan would cover from above and we would clear the bunkers from within, until he was hit in the head and fell inside."

We went down into the trenches
Into the pits and channels
And towards the death in the tunnels
Of Ammunition Hill

And no one asked where to
Whoever went first fell
One needed lots of luck
On Ammunition Hill

Whoever fell was dragged to the back
In order not to disrupt the movement forward
Until fell the next in line
On Ammunition Hill

Perhaps we were lions
But whoever wanted still to live
Should not have been
On Ammunition Hill

"We decided to try blowing up their bunker with a bazooka. The bazooka made a few scratches in the concrete. We decided to try with explosive material. I waited above them until the guy came back with the explosives. He would throw me package after package, and I would lay them one by one at the entrance of their bunker. They had a system of their own: first they threw a grenade, afterwards they fired a volley, and then they rested. Between volley and grenade, I would approach the entrance of their bunker and place the explosives. I triggered the explosives and moved away as far as I could. I had four meters in which to move because also behind me were [Arab] Legionnaires. I don't know why I received a commendation, I simply wanted to get home safely."

At seven, seven-twenty
To the police school
Were gathered all those who remained
From Ammunition Hill

Smoke arose from the hill
The sun in the east rose higher
We returned to the city, seven
From Ammunition Hill

We returned to the city, seven
Smoke arose from the hill
The sun in the east rose higher
On Ammunition Hill

On fortified bunkers
And on our brothers, men
Who remained there aged 20
On Ammunition Hill

The You Tube video I've embedded was taken on the hill, which stands still as it did that morning, a memorial to the soldiers who died taking Jerusalem.

Hakotel

This week we'll be celebrating 43 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, on the 2nd day of the Six Day War. So I'll be posting some of the shirim of those days.

Ofra Chaza (1957-2000) was born in Tel Aviv to a family of Yemenite Jews. She was one of our most important singers, and straddled various genres. When I presented Shirim Mizrachi'im last week a number of readers admonished me for not presenting Ofra, since she was an important performer of them. Yet she didn't start there, nor was she ever only a singer of mizrachi music. Since I'm bringing songs about Jerusalem this week, I've chosen one she sang.

Hakotel - the Western Wall - was written in the flush of victory after June 1967. Given that an event had just transpired which had been fervently anticipated for 1897 years, it would have been forgivable if the shirim of those days had been triumphant songs of victory. They weren't, not in the simple meaning of the words. Here, judge for yourselves: the words in Hebrew, English and transliteration are all on the You Tube page; if you look carefully you'll see Teddy Kollek, mythological mayor of Jerusalem, in the final frames of the film; the recording was probably made sometime in the 1980s, and the venue is the open-air auditorium below the wall of the Old City.

Lots of Strands

Yesterday I introduced Zohar Argov, the hero of Shirim Mizrachi'im, the Sephardi wing of Shirim Ivri'im which has long since become one of the lanes of the main highway.

The Shirim Mizrachi'im tend to gravitate towards two types of content. Personal songs of love, anguish after love and regret about love, in a manner that might be called the Israeli version of American Country music (though that's where the similarity ends); and religious songs. Remember, the Sephardi Jews tend to be less fanatic at religion than some Ashkenazis, but also much less secular - or if, then a secularism deeply informed and living alongside religion. The songs I brought yesterday belonged to the first group; here's an example of the second.

Shabechi Yerushalayim (Jerusalem, Praise the Lord) is verses 12-13 of the 147th Psalm, so it's been around for a long time. Here's a possible translation of the Psalm, though Google will offer you many others. The two verses in Hebrew, as they've been adapted to the song are here, and the English song-structured version is

Jerusalem praise God
Tzion praise God
Jerusalem praise God
Tzion praise God

For He made your gates locks strong
For He made your gates locks strong

For blessed the sons that sit in your city
For blessed the sons that sit in your city
For blessed the sons that sit in your city

Praise God Tzion
Praise God Tzion

Tzion is of course Zion in English.

The fellow who rendered the ancient Pslam into a modern song is Avihu Medina, born 1948 in Tel Aviv, one of the most important creators and occasional singer of Shirim Mizrachi'im. Badad, for example, which we saw yesterday, was written by him for his friend and protege Zohar Argov. I've linked to three You Tube versions. The first is by Avihu Medina himself, a few years ago. It's quality isn't very good, but it demonstrates how such shirim are often performed: at some local event, in cramped quarters, with everyone singing along. This particular recording is poignant because 11-year-old Roy Ginat, a blind child, got on the stage and played the accompanying keyboard. So it gives that aspect.

The second is by Hadag Nachash, a modern loud-noise band whom I've already introduced. In this case, they were giving a loud-noise concert at a Washington DC synagogue, when they launched into Shabechi Yerushalayim. I expect the original psalmist was spinning in his grave, but then, after 3,000 years of decay maybe there isn't enough coherent skeleton left to spin, so who knows. This video is interesting because by now (2006?) the Jewish-American Ashkenazi teenagers and students in Washington DC all know this Mizrachi song, and sing along, unsuprised that it's being offered by a band that normally does stuff that is not recognizably music if you were born earlier than, say, 1985.

I keep on carping on the point that Jerusalem is an important place for the Jews; this gives a surprising perspective on how that works.

The third recording is even more surprising. It's by Glykeria.

Glykeria is one of a few Greek singers, non-Jews from Greece who don't speak Hebrew, who have reciprocated to the Israeli public's love for Greek music and its incorporation into Shirim Ivri'im, by joining, and recording their own versions of the Israeli songs. Glykeria, born in 1953, first reached prominence in Greece in the 1980s, about the time Shirim Mizrachi'im were breaking into the Israeli mainstream. I don't know enough about such matters to say what her homeland stature is these days, but she was recording there for at least 20 years, and still visits Israel to sing the common music. (A stance which has gained her some enemies at home, of course). So here you've got a Greek woman, singing what is obviously Greek music, except that the words were written centuries before the heyday of ancient Athens, and unfortunately stand at the very center of international disagreements of the highest degree till this very day. The world never ceases to amaze, does it.

Shirim Mizrachi'im

I've been off the Shirim Ivri'im thread for a while, but there's still lots that could be said. So here's an installment.

Between sometime in the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, the strains of Israeli music which were deeply influenced by the surrounding culture were pushed aside, out of the mainstream: Arab music, Greek, Yemenite, Turkish. The music continued to be very popular, it just wasn't played nor accepted on the mainstream national platforms. (This would be impossible in the technology of the 1990s onward, of course, but the world was different in the 1960s). As usual with such narrow-minded censorship, society at large was the loser.

The change happened for various reasons; the single most significant, however, may have been the trickle-down effect of having a Likud government (though it could also have been the other way around, of course: there was a Likud government because of the coming of age of the Jews from Arab states). One way or the other, the early 1980s saw the resurgence of what was called Oriental music (musika mizrachit) into the mainstream, from which it never again departed. Oriental, meaning of course "non-European", not Japanese or Vietnamese.

The single most important singer to break down the barriers was Zohar Argov, 1955-1987. Argov was an unlikely character to be an enduring cultural icon, as his human flaws were considerably greater than most peoples', and included a jail spell for sexual assault and long bouts of drug abuse which eventually contributed to his suicide. Yet his exuberance as a performer and unabashed pride in his genre won him a permanent place in the pantheon of Shirim Ivri'im, and forever changed their contours. His 1980 album Elinor is apparently the best-selling album of Israelis songs ever, and some of his greatest hits are recorded again and again as if they came off the press for the first time just yesterday.

Here are two: Badad (Alone), and HaPerach Begani, (The Flower in My Garden), both from 1982. Haperach was the single most important battering ram into mainstream popularity.

Badad Hebrew lyrics
English translation
Alone, on the way to the nothingness
Alone, on the path to nothing
Alone, as the time flies
time does not forget
to set the limits.

Alone, without a carressing hand
alone, without a friend's shoulder
Alone, how good it is not to know
that your hand is already touching
the hand of some other man.

Chorus x2:
Alone I will walk - with no prayer,
alone, without a future, hope or dream

Alone, I will wander like the sun,
alone, in the hot desert
Alone, even tears are vanity;
suffering has no song to it
a song of the mute (of my mother).

Haperach Begani Hebrew lyrics
English translation
On a clear and crisp spring day
I remember you.
Already since then I knew well
that I won't give up,
for you were in my eye
every night and every day.
You were for me, as a heavenly angel
in the mist.
I wanted to ask for your hand.
I wanted to say to you
the secret of love that is in my heart
guarded from all.
I wanted to say to you, my love,
I loved and it's over
for I did not dare
also when it was too late.

Chorus:
You are my world at dawn.
You are mine all day.
You are my world at night.
You are the dream.
You are in my blood, my spirit and in my heart.
You are the sweet fragrance,
the flower in my garden.

Since you went my day is dimmed,
long and boring.
In vain I wish to forget
and not to notice.
Return fast, for without you
my world is desolate,
my vocal chords are silenced
and my violin is quiet.

Badad


Haperach Begani

Fanatics, Left and Right

Well, that was certainly fun, wasn't it.

I've been giving rather a lot of attention to the Israelis at the far left fringe who, intentionally or merely irresponsibly, aid and abet Israel's enemies in their campaign to bring it to its knees through lawfare, diplomacy, boycotts and other methods of delegitimization. This morning I thought I'd engage in a spot of even-handed balancing, so I criticized the fanatics of our political right. Had I given it much thought I'd have said I was (temporarily) siding with my lefty readers, of whom there are a number, including two who identify themselves.

It didn't work out that way. I was offline all day, but when I got back I found some 25 comments dissecting what I'd said from all directions.

First, my thanks to all the participants for the civil discussion. Blog discussions often don't remain civilized very long, and I'm honored that the ones on this blog mostly do.

The fact that our resident representatives of the hard left took umbrage at a post that was mostly critical of the far right is instructive. It rather reinforces my observation that the extremes are not only similar, they even feed off one another - which of course is not a new observation nor original, there are many historical examples. Fanatics will be fanatics; what makes them far from the mainstream is common to them all. So for those of you who questioned my use of the term "loonies", I was applying it as it usually is meant: folks who have severed themselves from the diverse perspectives to which a very large majority of their society adheres. When you've got a free and democratic society, with the diversity of opinion that such societies have, and then you've got small splinter groups of odd folks way off at the edge, I don't see the harm in calling them loonies.

Alex and Didi engaged in a spot of sleight of hand. They claimed I had said that the extremes of left and right have in common their eagerness or willingness to be violent; then they got all worked up about this accusation, though I hadn't actually said it.

So first, to be clear: yes, there are elements in Israel's looniest left who engage in violence against Israeli security forces. Not in murder, nor in terror as in random attacks of civilians, but low-level violence against officials of the state going about their legal and reasonable actions? Yes. Some of it has been reported in the media, some of it I take from the stories of my son Achikam who has been at the brunt of it as a soldier doing his job near Bil'in last year.

The reason Alex and Didi tried that rhetoric trick is that while political life-endangering violence in Israel has always been extremely rare, there has been a bit of it from right on left, and almost none from left on right. This gives the left a feeling of moral superiority. Yet the whole phenomenon is so limited and rare, that this is more sanctimony than plausible political reasoning. I can think of two political assassinations in 60 years, and a handful of attempts that may or may not have been intentionally unsuccessful. Tarnishing an entire camp with that thin a brush isn't reasonable, and exonerating the other camp for being the victim is feeble reasoning.

Anyway, it's a red herring, as Gavin calmly explained. Our loony left and frenzied right don't engage in the exact same activities: that's obvious. The right attacks innocent Palestinians, while the left undermines Israel's legitimacy as a democracy; the fanatics to the right are thugs, while their counterparts to the left are well-heeled academics, legal types and journalists; the ones to the right look outlandish in almost any setting while the ones on the left could easily melt into the background at a posh European conference - but that's the point, not an exoneration.

One of the most peculiar things about our loony left is how extraordinarily thin their skin is. They dish out barrels of filth, much of it either dishonest, downright false or at best tendentious, and they do so ever more often in foreign languages for the gleeful consumption of our enemies; yet whenever anyone calls them out for doing so, they shriek to the high heavens that democracy is being tortured to extinction. Jest yesterday we had yet another example.

Amir Benayoun is an orthodox singer who uses Arab forms of music. It was my intention to slow down the shirim ivri'im thread now, but sooner or later I'll obviously need to discuss the Sephardi music and its great contribution to Israeli music. I presented Benyoun briefly the other day.

This week Benayoun recorded a sing called Ani Achicha, I am Your Brother. The Hebrew lyrics are already up at shiron.net, here; there's no English translation up, nor am I convinced there will be. Im Tirzu posted the recording on You Tube.

What the song is about depends, apparently, on the beholder. The lyrics themselves express anguish. They are sung from the perspective of a young reservist, calling on his lefty brother to desist from hating him since they're brothers. I defend you, you spit on me; the enemy doesn't manage to kill me but you're trying to; as I charge forward my back is to you, but you're sharpening your knife; I'm your brother you're the enemy; I love you hate.

It's not a nice song. Nor is it fair, since there are soldiers of both political camps in the same combat units, and both camps have their share of shirkers. The most potent line in my opinion is Ata mosser oti le-Zar, you're turning me over to foreigners - except that the term mosser has centuries of baggage to it, and is a devastating accusation. (Jews who have betrayed their brothers to persecution are, alas, not as rare as we'd like).

Having read the lyrics over and over, and watched the video repeatedly, it seems to me a song of anguish, not hatred. In no scenario is it a threat to democracy.

Unless you read Haaretz. They put their story about it on the front page of the Hebrew paper edition (alas, not on their English-language website). The item uses all the tricks of the trade, telling of "enormous anger" but without any quantification and citing two excitable sources as if they're vox populi in classic Guardian agitprop style. Since these are quotations you can't quite attribute them to Haaretz itself, which is merely reporting. Of course, no quotations of supporters are forthcoming.

The final paragraph offers the observation of one Igor (no last name): "Benayoun stole his lyrics from the songs of Hoerst Wesel".

I don't think there were songs (plural) of Hoerst Wesel, only one - but that one was the Nazi battle song. So Haaretz has cast Amir Benayoun as a Nazi. Because he doesn't like the NIF.

Naomi Shemer: the First Prophetic Song

Noami Shemer (1930-2004) was the single most important writer of shirim ivri'im ever (lyrics and music). Her earliest ones were recorded in the late 1950s, and she kept on writing until shortly before her death. Many are at the center of the canon. Yet the uncanny thing about her was her ability to write shirim that defined pivotal historical events, and always in advance. There was something truly prophetic about her.

Her first prophetic moment was this very night, the night after Independence Day, in 1967.

In those days the final act of the holiday was a nationally live broadcast song festival, in which 12 new songs competed. They didn't have computers, iPhones, text messaging and all the other things we can't imagine life without, so the 12 songs would be preformed, then the audience in Binyanaei Haumah, Jerusalem's largest theater, would vote with old-fashioned slips of paper in envelopes, and it would take an hour to count the results. During that hour there'd be time filler of some sort. As the festival of 1967 was being prepared, the new mayor of Jerusalem, the extremely well connected Teddy Kollek, convinced the organizers that the time filler should relate to Jerusalem. So after the audience listened to the 12 contestants, voted, and went to the bathroom, they settled down to bide the time. Soon a young woman no-one had ever heard of climbed onto the stage with her guitar and sang. It was the first new song about Jerusalem written in the 19 years since independence and the partition of the city; it was a cry of pain that the city was divided.

The audience went wild. Never had a song caused so much excitement. By the next morning the entire county was singing Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, Jerusalem of Gold. It had struck some deep and unsuspected chord of regret: yes, we've got a state, but no, we're not back in Jerusalem. Not all is right.

What made the moment prophetic was that at the exact, precise moment that Shuly Natan was performing the song for the first time, Gamal Nasser, Egypt's president, was smashing the international agreements of 1956 by sending his divisions into the Sinai, in a move that within three weeks had precipitated the Six Day War. The song, which had mourned the fact that access to most of the holy sites of Jerusalem was banned by the Jordanians, was seen as the harbinger of the reunification of the city, and the ability of Jews to revisit their city. When the paratroopers reached the Kotel, the Western Wall, three weeks later, they sang Yerushalayim Shel Zahav with the full force of a prayer literally come true. Shemer quickly added a stanza about how we're back, and the song became the anthem of reunification.

Till this day Yerushalayim Shel Zahav stands above the canon of shirim ivri'im; it's the closest thing secular Israel has ever produced to a holy text.

Hebrew words
English translation

The mountain air is clear as wine
And the scent of pines
Is carried on the breeze of twilight
With the sound of bells.

And in the slumber of tree and stone
Captured in her dream
The city that sits solitary
And in its midst is a wall.

Chorus:
Jerusalem of gold
And of bronze, and of light
Behold I am a violin for all your songs.
x2

How the cisterns have dried
The market-place is empty
And no one frequents the Temple Mount
In the Old City.

And in the caves in the mountain
Winds are howling
And no one descends to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho.

Chorus...

But as I come to sing to you today,
And to adorn crowns to you (i.e. to tell your praise)
I am the smallest of the youngest of your children (i.e. the least worthy of doing so)
And of the last poet (i.e. of all the poets born).

For your name scorches the lips
Like the kiss of a seraph
If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Which is all gold...

Chorus...

We have returned to the cisterns
To the market and to the market-place
A ram's horn calls out on the Temple Mount
In the Old City.

And in the caves in the mountain
Thousands of suns shine -
We will once again descend to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho!

Chorus...

Here's the original recording from May 1967, followed by a 2002 one of the full song. Both are sung by Shuly Natan. In the latter recording she is introduced by Ehud manor, whom I've already introduced.

Mother of all Shirim

Naftali Herz Imber, a Romanian Jew, wrote Hatikva, The Hope, following a visit to Eretz Israel in 1878. It was popular among the early settlers of what eventually was called the first aliya, 1882-1904. Seen in historical perspective, it was an expression of the sea-change in Jewish history that was beginning at the time: the sentiments of Jewish aspirations to rebuild a national center in the historical homeland was not new - on the contrary, it was banal. Yet articulating it in a secular poem, putting it to music and singing it by people who took the concept as a practical guideline to be enacted by secular Jews, that was novel, and soon proved to be profoundly revolutionary.

Interestingly, Hatikva first took on the status of a quasi-anthem at the sixth Zionist Conference in 1903. Herzl had tabled a suggestion that the movement consider a British proposal to move European Jews to eastern Africa (the Uganda Plan), and the majority of delegates, who unlike him understood what Judaism was about, were horrified; they resoundingly sang Hatikva to make clear their point that their aspirations were about the national homeland, not some African backwater. Thereafter the song became the de-facto anthem of the Zionist movement, being officially adopted in 1933.

The melody derives from the same Romanian folksong which inspired Smetana when he composed Moldau.

Interestingly, while the song was always the national anthem of Israel, this was explicitly enacted only in 2004. The song in its present form is a slightly modified and shortened version of the original.

A German colleague who once happened to be visiting Israel during the week of Yom Hashoah-Yom Hazikaron-Independence Day pointed told me the Israeli national anthem is the only national anthem he's aware of which is a sad song: mostly they tend to be triumphant or martial or both.

כָּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה
נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה
וּלְפַאֲתֵי מִזְרָח, קָדִימָה
עַיִן לְצִיּוֹן צוֹפִיָּה -

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ
הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם
לִהְיוֹת עַם חָפְשִׁי בְּאַרְצֵנוּ
אֶרֶץ צִיּוֹן וִירוּשָׁלַיִם

As long as deep within the heart
A Jewish soul stirs,
And forward, to the ends of the East
An eye looks out, towards Zion.

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land
The land of Zion and Jerusalem

Here's a recording without words, and a recording sung by Rivka Zohar.