National anthems tend to be a dire species of music, often clunky and militaristic. I never really heard Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” (“The Hope”) until I was in Israel in September, and then realized that I’d heard it often before but didn’t know what it was.
So I like this one, and not just because it’s Israeli. It is musical, lovely, and not militaristic (see words below), and it’s about the hope of an oppressed people to return to their land. Compare “Deutschland Über Alles”! And as for musicality, it’s way ahead of our clunky and hard-to-sing “Star-Spangled Banner” (They really should make “America the Beautiful” our national anthem.)
And, of all the versions I’ve heard, this one’s the best, because it’s Streisand, and she’s a belter. This song really needs a belter.
The YouTube notes are these: “Barbra Streisand at the conclusion of the 1978 Stars Salute Israel show.” You can find a longer version on YouTube in which Babs precedes this performance with an online conversation with Golda Meir. And here’s a nice version with the public singing along with a chorus and the military.
Here are the Hebrew words, a transliteration, and a translation into English:
Yes, it is beautiful!
It’s lovely. The song sounds mournful and longing to me.
It’s supposed to be. It’s the Jews longing for their home. “Next year in Jerusalem,” as they say on every Passover.
Yes to your point that the emotion is quite different than US’s “we were victorious in battle.”
A video was around eXtwitter recently of Golda Meir explaining concisely Jewish identity and Israel – really clear. If I find a link, I’ll put it here.
Here is something : https://x.com/dinaonaizi/status/1741076769677902249?s=46
Not the thing I recall, but it’s good.
I like this choral version:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOF3IBmmaw
It’s hard to beat the Marsellaise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MQ-SC9bmp4
My latest party piece is singing God Save the King to the tune of the Marseillaise! You need to use two verses, so –
Oh lord our god arise
Scatter our enemies
And make them fall. Etc
My favourite tune is the Russian, & I am also fond of the East German-
Auferstanden aus ruinen.
The Welsh anthem also deserves special mention. Just listen to a crowd sing it at Cardiff…
Beautiful. It’s possible that I knew how to sing Hatikvah before learning the Star Spangled Banner. I’m sure that I had learned it by the time I was eight and started Hebrew school in my hometown of Binghamton, New York. There’s a plaintive sadness to the song, even as it represents pride and hope, both in the lyrics and the melody. One of the best of the genre.
Here it is being sung at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp—on the first Shabbat after liberation—and three years before the establishment of the State of Israel. The survivors sang with what little breath they had remaining.: https://youtu.be/TWOkML4A8sU?si=gO_Sh0P-Ja47Imtg
They sang of Hope.
I have heard it before, didn’t know it was Israel’s national anthem. Probably heard it at Camp Kinderland with words more appropriate for socialist campers.
The music of the Hatikva resembles very much to the music of The Moldau from composer friedrich Smetana
The major theme is identical. The reason why everyone thinks they’ve heard Ha-Tikvah before is because they’ve heard the climax of “The Moldau” before, one of the most popular classical pieces frequently used in movies/documentaries..
I hear it – the signature melodic passage.
Quite different directions though – The Taurus v. Led Zeppelin case over Stairway to Heaven comes to mind. In each, a clear passage is heard – the line cliché passus duriusculus. Intriguing case.
IMHO : it happens – ideas usually come from somewhere, never ex nihilo, so traces of prior art can be found – music is, after all, something of a magic spell.
I agree with much preferring America The Beautiful to The Star Spangled Banner except that God is in the first verse of America The Beautiful while he doesn’t make an appearance until the fourth verse of The Star Spangled Banner which no one ever gets to.
Ha. 🙂 I guess you wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with me because I much prefer Battle Hymn of the Republic to America the Beautiful. Not to replace SSB — that’s not for foreigners to say — but just on their own merits. The diction in BHR is uncompromisingly perfect even when the lyrics don’t quite make sense. The God bit is a minor quibble to me but I can see why many would baulk at it. The essence of a patriotic anthem is that there is something bigger than yourself.
My wife is American so on road trips with the kids we always sang “The Star Spangled Banner” when we crossed from Canada into the USA. Belted it out. Fantastic song. And “Oh Canada” on the return trip ofc. God keeps our land in the fourth stanza of the latter, so it’s about even.
The Star Spangled Banner is the greatest anthem for a nation imaginable. This is appropriate, since it sings the triumph and challenge of the greatest nation to ever exist.
Making and keeping a nation based on freedom is not easy. Why should its anthem be? Everyone knows the “grace” of a superstitious being is not going to stop the enemy at the gates. You have to fight for it.
Our nation — and it’s anthem — asks posterity in the last stanza … “were you able to keep the country free?”
Anyone who thinks an anthem should be about the color of the sky and mountains, the fruit trees and wheat, instead of the idea at its heart … is not likely contribute to “yes.”
But the tune by a Gloucestershire musicologist! 😁
I did not realize it was only designated the anthem in 1931!
How do those two points speak to my post about the supremely elevated level to which the Anthem of the United States of America has been raised? It is the most important political song in the world, and for the advancement of The Enlightenment.
I like “Hatikvah”, a lot. Ms.Steisand’s rendition is superb. My Youtube suggestions include an instructional video for how to sing it for a choral setting. With the rallies for Israel lately, I ought to learn it. It’s moving to hear a large crowd singing it.
Why, oh why diss the German anthem by lyrics long rescinded, and for good reason?
The 18th-century melody is beautiful and moving. The only stanza that remains of its 19th-century lyrics is a poetic and methinks uncontroversial call to prosperity through unity and collaboration, starting with Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit, all the more fitting since 1989/90.
The German anthem, including the rescinded stanzas, is one of the few that isn’t openly militaristic (though it had an anti-French thrust at the time), and does not celebrate a military victory. People even in Germany nowadays tend not to know the greater context of the lyrics of “Deutschlandlied”, a call for unity in a (for the time) progressive polity to replace the many feudal fiefdoms, some of which still practiced inherited serfdom. It doesn’t call for conquests, it just describes the then geography of German speaking countries. “Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, deutscher Wein” is cringeworthy today, but is at least better than German canons.
Plus a tune by Haydn, used as a hymn tune in GB.
That really is beautiful. I feel like I’ve heard it used on a soundtrack to a movie. Nothing like most anthems, for sure.
What you heard on the movie soundtrack was Smetana’s The Moldau, I suspect.
For a long time I thought that the Ha-Tikvah composer just “stole” the Moldau passage, but the official position is that both composers used the same folk song, only it seems to be unclear what that song actually is. Edit: Daniel’s comment below tells us.
Most national anthems are cheesy and tacky in their lyrics. Though the melody can often be quite beautiful.
“Compare “Deutschland Über Alles”!” – J. Coyne
Well, the music of our national anthem is anything but ugly, especially as it was composed (in 1797) by none other than Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest composers of all times. And, as for the lyrics, I presume you already know that we Germans no longer sing the first two stanzas of Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s “Lied der Deutschen”/”Song of the Germans” (written in 1841), beginning with “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt.” Only the third stanza is now part of our national anthem: https://www.bundestag.de/en/parliament/symbols/anthem
“Unity and right and freedom
For the German fatherland!
Let us all pursue this purpose
Fraternally with heart and hand!
Unity and right and freedom
Are the pledge of happiness;
Flourish in this blessing’s glory,
Flourish, German fatherland!”
In these horrible times of war, I want to mention Ukraine’s beautiful national anthem:
“The glory of Ukraine has not yet perished, nor the will.
Still upon us, young brothers, fate shall smile.
Our enemies shall vanish, like dew in the sun.
We too shall rule, brothers, our country.
Soul and body shall we lay down for our freedom,
And we will show, brothers, that we are of the Cossack nation!”
I like this choral version (from 1967) of Israel’s national anthem, featuring Leonard Bernstein, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra & Tel-Aviv Philharmonic Choir.
The Hatikvah is a very fine piece of Jewish music. So is Kol Nidrei. I’m neither Jewish nor religious, but especially this version sung by Leo Roth & der Leipziger Synagogal-Chor really gets me.
Musically it’s origins are a 16th century Italian melody called La Mantovana. Survives as a song by Giuseppino del Biado: Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi da questo cielo. Here it is sung by the great Marco Beasley https://youtu.be/MMst624lBrA?si=Nh7r4JmSPPb-iKJi&t=131
Melody also used in the Moldau by Smetena from Ma Vlast
Thank you. I didn’t know that. Whenever I looked this up, I variously found that it was supposedly an eastern European/Balkanese song. I wonder for how long this beautiful, haunting melody has been travelling around Europe…