"Hatikvah" (Hebrew: הַתִּקְוָה, pronounced[hatikˈva], lit. English: "The Hope") is the national anthem of Israel. Its lyrics are adapted from a poem by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów (today Zolochiv, Ukraine), then part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary. Imber wrote the first version of the poem in 1877, while the guest of a Jewish scholar in Iași, Romania. The romantic anthem's theme reflects the Jews' 2,000-year-old hope of returning to the Land of Israel, restoring it, and reclaiming it as a sovereign nation.
History
Lyrics
The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naphtali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv, a city often referred to by its nickname "The City of Poets", in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, today Zolochiv, Ukraine. In the early 1880s Imber moved to Ottoman-governed Palestine (also called the Land of Israel), where lived in two or more of the first Jewish colonies. The foundation of Hatikvah is Imber's nine-stanzapoem named Tikvatenu ("Our Hope"), in which Imber puts into words his thoughts and feelings following the establishment of one of the first Jewish settlements, Petah Tikva (whose name means "Opening of Hope"). Published in Imber's first book Barkai[The Shining Morning Star], Jerusalem, 1886, the poem was subsequently adopted as an anthem by the "Hovevei Zion" and later by the Zionist Movement at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The text was later revised by the settlers of Rishon LeZion, subsequently undergoing a number of other changes.
The quarter was founded in 1935, named for "Mount Hope" ("Har HaTikva" in Hebrew), a farm built in 1855 by Protestant Prussian and American immigrants. Almira Steinbeck, who left the farm with her family, was grandmother to John Steinbeck. It became part of the Tel Aviv municipal area after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
So long as still within our breasts The Jewish heart beats true, So long as still towards the East, To Zion, looks the Jew, So long our hopes are not yet lost Two thousand years we cherished them To live in freedom in the land
