Tikvatenu (Our Hope)

Naftali Herz Imber

1884

At the request of a well-known patriot

Our hope is not yet lost1
That hope of ages
To return to the land of our fathers
To the city where David dwelt2
As long as hope remains in our hearts
The Jewish soul continues to yearn
Before us to the Eastern horizon
Gazing with its eye to Zion.
As long as tears fall
Like the rain of alms
Thousands of our people
Still go to the graves of our fathers.
As long as the wall of our yearning3
Appears before our eyes
And on the destruction of our Temple,
An eye still fills with tears.
As long as the source of the Jordan
Laps its waves onto its shores
And to the Sea of Galilee with a roar
Falls with all its clamor
As long as there the roads
Where the gates are barren
And within the ruins of Jerusalem
The daughters of Zion weep
As long as the pure tears there
Fall from the eyes of my people
To weep over Zion at the start of each watch
And rise at midnight to moan
As long as the love for the nation
Beats in the heart of the Jew
We can still hope today
That the vengeful Lord4 will have mercy on us
Hearken our brothers in exiled lands
To the voice of one of our visionaries
For only with the last Jew
Our hope will be realized.

Translated by
Karen Alkalay
Gut
.

Notes

[Cf. Ezekiel 37:11.—Trans.]

[Isaiah 29:1.—Trans.]

[I.e., the Wailing Wall.—Trans.]

[Psalm 7:12.—Trans.]

Credits

Naftali Hertz Imber, “Tikvateinu” [proto–Hatikvah], from Sefer Barkai: Kollel shirim ‘al Yisra’el ve-‘al yishuv ’erets Yisra’el ve-'al ha-moshavot, ’asher shar ha-meshorer ha-melits ha-nodah ‘al ’adamat ’erets yisra’el (Jerusalem, 1886).

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Naftali Herz Imber

1856–1909

Born in Złoczów in Habsburg Galicia (today Zolochiv, Ukraine) to a religious family, Naftali was a child prodigy who wrote his first Hebrew poems at age ten. He studied the Zohar, and in 1877, while working as a peripatetic tutor in Eastern Europe, he claimed to know eleven languages. In 1882, Imber moved to Palestine, residing in Haifa and Daliyat al-Karmel as the live-in secretary to the British Christian Zionist author Sir Laurence Oliphant. In Palestine, Imber was known as a drunk, a neighborly nuisance, and an accomplished poet. His most famous poem, “Tikvatenu” (Our Hope), first written in 1877/8 in Romania and later revised in Palestine, was included in his first published collection, Barkai (Morning Star, 1886) and later became (in altered and shortened form) the israeli national anthem “Hatikvah” (The Hope), with a melody adapted from a Romanian folk song by Samuel Cohen (1879–1940). Imber left Palestine in 1887, eventually settling in 1892 in America, where he obtained the beneficence of a monthly allowance from Judge Mayer Sulzberger. Imber died in New York City destitute and suffering from alcoholism.

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