by Rena Pearl

There is a moment, maybe you’ve experienced it, when the first soft notes of Hatikva begin to rise in a synagogue, a stadium, a school hall, or at a Holocaust memorial, it doesn’t matter where. The room shifts. People stand, often placing a hand over their heart. Some close their eyes. Others hold back tears. It is more than just a national anthem. Hatikva —The Hope — is a heartbeat echoing across generations. It tells a story not just of a country, but of a people who refused to let their dream die.

The first time I truly, and I mean truly heard Hatikvah, I wasn’t standing in a school assembly or at Habonim, or the other usual places I heard it. It was in the mid 70’s at Yad Vashem, surrounded by silence and stone. And then, faintly, from a nearby speaker, came that familiar melody — slow, mournful, yet rising. “Od lo avdah tikvatenu…” Our hope is not yet lost.

In that moment, it wasn’t just an anthem. It was a prayer, a memory, a declaration — somehow carrying centuries of exile, endurance, and faith in just a few haunting bars.

The story of Hatikva begins not in Israel, but in 19th century Europe. The poem that would become the anthem was penned in 1878 by Naftali Herz Imber, a young Jewish poet from what is now Ukraine. He wrote it after being inspired by Jewish pioneers in the Land of Israel, who had returned to till the soil of their ancestors, building new lives in the ancient homeland.

The poem was called Tikvatenu—”Our Hope”—and it resonated with a yearning that every Jew in the Diaspora understood. For nearly two thousand years, we had prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Imber’s words gave emotional voice to that spiritual longing. His verses told of a soul that had never ceased to hope, even while scattered in foreign lands.

The lines that would eventually become the anthem declared:

“As long as in the heart within,
The Jewish soul still yearns,
And onward toward the ends of the east,
An eye still gazes toward Zion…”

Four years later Imber immigrated to what was then Ottoman Palestine in 1882. He traveled there with Sir Laurence Oliphant, a Christian Zionist who employed him as a secretary.

Over time, Imber’s poem found its melody composed by a Romanian immigrant Samual Cohen; it is a melody tinged with the deep emotion of Jewish memory. This haunting, hopeful tune began spreading across Zionist gatherings and Jewish communities. By the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Hatikva had become the unofficial anthem of Jewish renewal.

During the Holocaust, Hatikva was sung quietly in ghettos, whispered behind barbed wire, and even defiantly in the camps. It became a quiet rebellion and a spiritual lifeline. Survivors remember singing it with broken voices as liberation came – a song of hope rising from the ashes.

On 14 May 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, the people sang Hatikva. And though it wasn’t officially designated as Israel’s national anthem until 2004, its place in the peoples hearts was never in question.

Since 7 October, 2023, when Hamas launched its brutal and barbaric attack on Israel, taking lives and abducting 201 hostages, Hatikva has taken on an even deeper, more visceral meaning. At rallies around the world, in candlelight vigils, and in pro-Israel gatherings, the anthem has been sung through tears and trembling voices. In shuls around the world people have stood shoulder to shoulder, singing not just in solidarity, but in grief, in resilience, and with a cry for the return of every captive. Each word now feels like both a lament and a defiant declaration: “Our hope is not yet lost.” It is a song that binds the tribe.

What makes Hatikva so powerful is its honesty. It’s not a song of victory, but of hope, not a declaration of arrival, but of the journey. It reflects who we are: a people who carry dreams across deserts, centuries, and continents.

We sing Hatikva today, not just to honour the past, but to affirm that hope is alive in us. It lives in every act of kindness, every prayer for peace, every visit to Israel, every Jewish child learning Hebrew, every candle we light.

And though modern Israel is filled with complexity, political, social, spiritual, the simple truth is this: Hatikva remains. The hope remains.

Because to be a Jew is to believe that no matter how far we’ve wandered, we can still return. No matter how much darkness we’ve seen, the light still rises. And no matter how long it takes, the dream will not die.

We are still here.

Od lo avdah tikvateinu – Our hope is not yet lost

Am Yisrael Chai.

Kol od baleivav penimah
Nefesh yehudi homiyah,
Ulfa’atey mizrah kadimah,
Ayin letsiyon tsofiyah;

Od lo avdah tikvateinu,
Hatikvah bat shenot al payim,
Lihyot am hofshi be’artzeinu,
Eretz tziyon veyerushalayim.