Where did “Hatikvah”, the Israeli national anthem, originate?
The poem “Hatikvah,” originally entitled “Tikvateinu,” or “Our Hope,” was written by the Rumanian poet Naphtali Hertz Imber in 1878. Imber is said to have been influenced by the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones: “And God Said to Me: O mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone.” “Hatikvah” was inspired by the founding of Petach Tikvah, an agricultural settlement in Palestine. It originally read, “Our hope is not yet lost, the age-old hope, to return to the land of our fathers, to the city where David dwelt,” but was changed to, “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.” In 1882 Imber read it to the pioneers of Rishon LeTziyon, who adopted it enthusiastically. Samuel Cohen, a Moldavian immigrant to Palestine, who was living in Rishon LeTziyon at that time, set it to the melody of “Cart and Ox,” a well known Romanian folk song. “Hatikvah” w
