Sermon: Shabbat Tazria-Metsora/Shabbat Atsmaut

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 19 April 2021

My early memories of going to the cinema include everybody standing, rather reverently, at the end of the film, as “God save the Queen” was played. By the mid-late 1950s, however, people started edging their way to the exit, rather self-consciously, while the anthem was still playing. Throughout the 1960s, that trickle became a flood. It must be at least 50 years since “God save the Queen” has been heard in cinemas. It’s been around since the 1740s, but it has never been actually officially endorsed as the national anthem by Act of Parliament or Royal Decree.

Throughout the 19thC, most European countries acquired their own national anthem – people considered it part of the paraphernalia of a modern nation state. They didn’t therefore just evolve naturally, in the way that football club anthems did. “You’ll never walk alone” is a song from the 1945 musical ‘Carousel.’ In 1963, the Mersey Beat group, Gerry and the Pacemakers, had a No 1 hit with their version of it. It obviously resonated with Liverpool Football Club fans who adopted it as their anthem.

By contrast, anthems are consciously created traditions, intended to engender a spirit of national belonging, cohesion and identity.

Last Wednesday evening, Reform Judaism’s Yom Ha’Atsmaut programme ended with singing “Hatikvah.” How could it not? But how did it become Israel’s anthem?

It was written by a fascinating character, Naftali Herz Imber. Born in Galicia in 1855 he had a traditional upbringing but showed literary aspirations and promise as a poet. He settled in Palestine in 1882, became secretary to Sir Laurence Oliphant an eccentric British scholar, mystic, Christian Zionist. He wrote “Hatikvah” apparently in response to the establishment of Petach Tikvah. He travelled around the early Zionist settlements giving poetry readings. At one such reading, in Rishon-le-Zion in 1887, one of his listeners, a young man from Roumania, was so taken with it that he set it to music. Nobody knows where he got the melody: Was it based on a Roumanian folk-tune? or on Smetana’s Moldau? on a Sephardic arrangement for Psalm 126? Nobody knows.

By the 1890s, Imber had left Palestine and ended up in New York, where he presented himself as a prophet and mystic. Photos show him dressed in flowing white robes. He continued to write his poems, translated Omar Khayyam into Hebrew, had a disastrous marriage. He died in 1909, penniless and an alcoholic. But Jews loved his poems and apparently turned out in large numbers for his funeral. In 1953 his remains were transferred to Israel.

At the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that “Hatikvah” would become the Zionist anthem. There were serious contenders. One, in particular, “Dort wo die Zeder,” “There where the Cedar trees grow,” was sung at that first Congress. [You can hear a scratchy recording on You Tube.] Herzl liked it and it received thunderous applause. Yet 4 years later, at the 1901 Congress, “Hatikvah” was sung. It was officially adopted as the Zionist anthem in 1933.

On the recording of Ben Gurion’s declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, you can hear the crowd in the street outside singing it. By then it was clearly Israel’s unofficial anthem, but it was only in 2004 that the Knesset passed a bill making it the official anthem of the State. In 1967, for example, many argued that Naomi Shemer’s Yerushalayim shel Zahav should be the official anthem.

After 1948, Imber’s “Hatikvah” needed some rewriting. His second verse went:

od lo avdah tikvateinu, our hope is not yet lost

the ancient hope

to return to the land of our fathers

to the city where David dwelt.

That verse had to be rewritten so that we now sing:

od lo avdah tikvateinu, 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.

 

But from the outset there were objections to its use as an official or unofficial anthem.

Orthodox groups were unhappy because it didn’t mention God or the Torah. Indeed, Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, composed “HaEmunah,” “the Faith,” which he hoped would replace “Hatikvah.” But it never took hold and even he finally accepted “Hatikvah” as the anthem.

Socialist and secular Zionists, on the other hand, objected to it because they found it too religious.

Some found the melody to be too gloomy, too low key, not uplifting enough, not majestic enough to function as a national anthem, which should stir the heart and touch the emotions.

Some Sephardim were unhappy with it because it talks of our eyes turning eastward to Zion. But for a Jew living in India or Persia, Zion was to the west. Anyway the way it’s sung reflects Ashkenazi pronunciation, which so often puts the empharsis on the wrong syllarble.

People didn’t, obviously, start walking out of British cinemas in the 1950s because they wanted to get home a bit quicker. It was no doubt because the national anthem no longer spoke to them in the way it had, say, during the war. It no longer reflected how they saw themselves in relation to this country, it’s rulers and so on.

In the last 20 or 30 years, “HaTikvah” has come under scrutiny in some quarters of Israeli society.

In 1998, Israel played Austria in a European Cup football match. As usual in such matches, the anthems of both countries are played. When “Hatikvah” was played the Israeli team sang it except for Walid Badir, an Arab member of the team, who stood in silence.

Putting politics aside, should we expect an Israeli Christian or Moslem to sing a national anthem which speaks of the Jewish soul yearning in the innermost heart, eyes turning eastward to Zion, a 2000 year-long hope, and so on?

In 2012, Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch stepped down from the Israeli Supreme Court. Her fellow judges gathered to celebrate her work, ending with singing “Hatikvah.” All joined in except Justice Selim Joubran, an Israeli Maronite Christian Arab. Photos from that event show him standing there, respectfully, but not singing. As you might imagine, it provoked a spirited discussion in Israel. Right-wing commentators and politicians were scathing in their criticism. But most Israelis seemed to understand. Netanyahu supported Joubran and his, Bibi’s, deputy, a former army chief of staff, accused Joubran’s critics of racism, reminding them that non-Jewish Israeli soldiers weren’t expected to sing “Hatikvah” at army events. Another Justice, Elyakim Rubenstein, is quoted as saying, “Arab citizens shouldn’t be required to sing words that do not speak to their hearts and which do not reflect their roots.”

I don’t know how many of us would have thought that singing “Hatikvah” might be difficult for non-Jewish Israeli citizens. Since 1967, of course, with a large Arab population now under its control, singing “Hatikvah” has become a fraught and complex question.

For the last 25 years, a demographic unit at Tel Aviv University has been conducting a monthly poll of Israeli Arabs and Jews about issues relating to war, peace and identity. Following that Supreme Court incident, they found that 80% of Jewish respondents believed that “Hatikvah” was suitable as a national anthem; but 62% of those same respondents also understood why an Israeli Arab, even one in an official position, like Justice Joubran, should not be required to sing it at public events. Hardly surprisingly, 90% of Arab respondents found singing “Hatikvah” difficult. For them it is, after all, a song about somebody else, somebody else’s hopes and centuries-long aspirations. It doesn’t express their sense of what it is to be an Israeli.

It’s not that long ago that people criticised the lusty and bombastic of singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ at the last night of the Proms. That furore has died down, in part because it was argued that while people sang these songs with great gusto, they didn’t actually take the words or sentiments seriously, even with all the flag waving.

But maybe the 1948 is still too recent to make the “sing the words but don’t take them too seriously” argument applicable to the “Hatikvah.” And for many who have questions about it, the key date is not 1948 but even more recently 1967.

Until the 1950s, few, I guess, would have questioned standing reverently for “God Save the Queen” at the end of a cinema performance. But throughout the 1950s, attitudes to national anthems changed. After a plebiscite vote in 1984 in Australia, for example, a majority voted in favour of “Advance Australia fair” instead of “God Save the Queen” as the official national anthem.

It’s clear that replacing “Hatikvah” with something else wouldn’t be acceptable. You don’t accommodate the feelings of a minority, albeit a sizeable one, by ignoring the feelings of the larger majority. The words were changed once before, in 1948, to respond to a new situation. Might there be some possibility of a creative re-working/ re-wording of “Hatikvah”? Some have suggested that replacing the word ‘yehudi’ ‘Jew’ with ‘yisraeli’ ‘Israeli’ might make it acceptable. We heard at last Wednesday’s Yom HaAtsmaut celebration from the woman who has been working to make Hebrew, a seriously gendered-language, into something more gender neutral. Some remarkable changes have been proposed; without violating its message, maybe something can be proposed for making “Hatikvah” more acceptable to all of its population.