HATIKVAH - National Anthem of ISRAEL, arr. Andrey Shilov
The project “NATIONAL ANTHEMS OF BROTHERLY COUNTRIES” is continued with the Anthem of Israel. The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv (Polish: Zloczow), a city nicknamed "The City of Poets", then in Austrian Poland, today in Ukraine. His words "Lashuv le&aposeretz avotenu" (to return to the land of our forefathers) expressed its aspiration. In 1882, Imber emigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine and read his poem to the pioneers of the early Jewish villages - Rishon LeZion, Rehovot, Gedera, and Yesud Hama&aposala. In 1887, Samuel or Shmuel Cohen, a very young (17 or 18 years old) resident of Rishon LeZion with a musical background, sang the poem by using a melody he knew from Romania and making it into a song, after witnessing the emotional responses of the Jewish farmers who had heard the poem. Cohen&aposs musical adaptation served as a catalyst and facilitated the poem&aposs rapid spread throughout the Zionist communities of Palestine. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, "Hatikvah" was unofficially proclaimed the national anthem. It did not officially become the national anthem until November 2004, when an abbreviated and edited version was sanctioned by the Knesset in an amendment to the Flag and Coat-of-Arms Law (now renamed the Flag, Coat-of-Arms, and National Anthem Law).