HATIKVA

Israel’s National Anthem Hatikva (Hope) has been mentioned before with regard to its music. This time we shall be talking about its lyrics. Rather ironically, some religious Jews have objected to their Anthem on the grounds of it being “too secular.” This is disingenuous, however, because it is impossible not to find even in the most secular piece of Judaica, a mother lode of religious references and symbolism. And Hatikva is no exception in this case. Let us start by quoting the song’s original lyrics, written in 1878 by Naphtali Herz Imber. We shall limit ourselves to the first verse and the refrain, for they alone already tell the story:

“As long as in the heart A Jewish soul still yearns, And onward, to the East, An eye still gazes toward Zion, Our hope is not yet lost, The ancient hope, To return to the land of our fathers, The city where David was dwelling.”

The strong Biblical references and religious themes are unambiguous here. No wonder that when the song was turned into the national anthem (unofficially in 1948 and formally in 2004), certain changes to its lyrics were made, partly to reflect, of course, that the return had by then taken place. Here are those changes:

“As long as in the heart A Jewish soul still yearns, And onward, to the East, An eye still gazes toward 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.”

The changes were thus made, but obviously, no matter how many key words one takes out of a song, there is no way that the religious spirit of Judaism could be taken out of Zionism. The name Zion itself is Biblical to the core, repeated 154 times in the TaNaKh. So is the word Jerusalem, charged to the point of saturation with a special religious meaning, as amply illustrated by these two verses of Psalm 147:

The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcast of Israel. (Ps. 147:2.) Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion. (Ps. 147:12.)

Thus, even the new “secularized” lyrics of Hatikva, just by mentioning Zion and Jerusalem together, trigger a wealth of purely religious associations which have become so ingrained in the texture of secular Zionism, as to become indistinguishable from it, to which Israel’s national anthem Hatikva bears such a powerful and unimpeachable witness.

The fact of the matter is that, in so far as the Jews are concerned, Jewish secular nationalism is inseparable from, and even virtually identical with, Jewish religious self-awareness, as religion is indeed the overwhelming source of that nationalism. The nationalist “hope of two thousand years” is no less than a dogmatic religious stand, as God Himself appears to underwrite the Zionist claim to the land of Greater Israel…

…Well, religion and politics is an explosive mix. Which makes the ongoing conflict in the Middle East not only terribly dangerous, but also hopelessly apocalyptic.