Mavi Boncuk |
Naphtali Herz Imber (b. Zoczów (now Zolochiv) Galicia, Ukraine 1856 - 1909), is the poet behind "Ha-Tikvah" (The Hope), the Zionist and later the Israel national anthem. He received a traditional education that did not include secular subjects. He began to write and to travel at a very young age.
Imber arrived in Palestine as secretary of Laurence Oliphant[1]. In 1882, while in Constantinople, Imber met by chance with the English parliamentarian, author and mystic who was headed to Palestine to settle Jews there in the belief that this would hasten the redemption. Oliphant took Imber with him as his personal secretary and Hebrew teacher to his wife Alice. The Oliphants and Imber settled in the Druse village of Daliat al-Carmel[2] – a fact that would come into play more than 100 years later – but things did not work out.
“Imber was a bohemian character who could not hold a job, was a heavy drinker and a womanizer,” explains Baltsan. [3] “After six months with Oliphant, Imber became romantically involved with the Englishman’s wife and was fired.”
Imber moved on to Jerusalem and wandered around the country on a donkey visiting all the early Zionist settlements and offering to write anthems for them. “Tikvateinu,” which was published in 1886 in Jerusalem as part of Imber’s first book of poems Barkai (the dawn star), became the anthem of no fewer than nine settlements.
It wasn’t until 1895 that “Tikvateinu” became “Hatikva” when it was published in a book of poems. Imber, meanwhile, broke and discontent, had had left Palestine in 1887 for New York, where he married a Christian woman who converted, divorced her and spent the rest of his life in squalor, misery and alcoholism. "Ha-Tikva," first published as "Tikvatenu" (Our Hope) in Imber's first volume of poems is dated "Jerusalem, 1884."
[1] LAURENCE OLIPHANT (1829–1888), English writer and traveler, Christian mystic, and active supporter of the return of the Jewish people to Ereẓ Israel. Born of a Scotch family in the Cape of Good Hope, Oliphant traveled in many countries and wrote impressive travel books. From 1865 to 1867 he was a member of parliament. During the Russo-Turkish War (1878) he began to take an interest in the Holy Land and Jewish settlement there, in a blending of political, economical, and religious-mystic considerations. He supported Turkey and thought that the best way to revive it was by improving the condition of its Asian regions, first and foremost Palestine.
[2] It was more than 120 years after “Hatikva” was first written and almost 60 years after the State of Israel was founded before it became the official national anthem, and once again there was a twist in the tale, as it took the vote of Ayoub Kara, a Druse MK, to push through an amendment to the Flag, Coat-of-Arms and National Anthem Law. Kara is from Daliat al-Carmel and his grandfather had worked as an assistant to Oliphant.
[3] Musicologist and concert pianist Astrith Baltsan undertook an eight-year journey to research the story of the national anthem – a journey that resulted in a book, Hatikva – Past, Present, Future,
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