Hatikvah - IN LA. MATI GALA NIGHT MAY 19, 2012

Only In Israel – Deaf Hatikva

From Facebook where this was posted with the video:

This Volunteer Soldiers’ Basic Training was extra special because the majority of the soldiers (who are not deaf) asked to be taught to sign the Hatikva national anthem at the closing ceremony (usually only the deaf soldiers and their interpreter sign it). Maybe it will be a precedent, hallevai! We got the story first-hand from our daughter, who loves her miluim (reserve service) in the IDF, interpreting basic training / courses into sign language for deaf soldiers. She can be spotted in the clip on a few occasions (in blue shirt), standing in front of the soldiers and signing.

Update 14 Oct: here is a more detailed description (from the same Facebook post) of the program that allows kids who wouldn’t normally be drafted to spend time with the IDF. I’ve edited a couple of descriptions together.

The Sar-El/Volunteers for Israel program also helps disabled kids who would not normally be drafted spend a day or two on a nearby base, wear the uniforms and help in the kitchens, etc., usually with volunteers. 

I asked about this when I noticed a couple of Downs Syndrome kids and one in a wheelchair on my base. Knowing that high-school age kids are not always gentle, I made sure to keep an eye on these kids and was so touched by the kindness shown to them by the soldiers: stopping to chat, giving them a hug or a cold drink, helping the kid in the wheelchair with his tray in the crowded mess hall.

The volunteers in the clip are not Sar-El volunteers. For anyone who might be new to how it works in Israel , here’s a little background about these volunteers.

Although the draft is compulsory for Israeli youngsters at 18, a number of them are not drafted into the IDF for various health reasons and many of these then insist on volunteering. Some are clearly physically handicapped, some are deaf or blind, others might have limitations or suffer from medical conditions that aren’t evident to laymen.

The basic training for volunteers is always inspirational for all involved as these soldiers have chosen to serve, and that means serving the full 3 years (or 2 for women) like all their counterparts, even though they were officially released from doing so.

Sometimes, they even have to put up a huge fight to persuade the Army to accept them as volunteers! Once in the IDF, the sky is the limit for them for any position that their handicap does not prevent them from pursuing, so they can have most meaningful positions in intelligence, for example.

Hatikvah / America The Beautiful – the Mash Up By: Yori Yanover

Cantors Angela Buchdahl and Julia Katz sing an American-Israeli anthem during Shabbat worship services at the Central Synagogue, June 14, 2013. I chose to post it because I was curious to hear Buchdahl’s voice, after the brouhaha of the last few days regarding her illusive Orthodox conversion. She’s probably the new face of the reform movement: racially diverse, utilizing Jewish and Zionist themes in a Hebrew/English service, and singing beautifully. But, seriously, is that what you do in shul on Shabbes?

Rabbi Meir Kahane was right: Do you really expect the Arabs to sing a national anthem about Jewish yearnings?

Rabbi Meir Kahane used to warn that one day the Arabs would rise up and refuse to sing Israel's national anthem since they have no use for the yearning of a Jewish soul. That day has already come. So instead of facing up to that reality, our Leftists are trying to change it.

The Leftist 'Jewish' Daily Forward commissioned Neshama Carlebach (who reads this blog, if I'm not mistaken, and in whom I am deeply disappointed) to make up a politically correct version of HaTikva, our national anthem. Basically, the politically correct version removes all Jewish content except for the word Zion at the end (and the fact that Jerusalem is not referred to as al-Quds at the end). It's an Israeli anthem - not a Jewish one.

For those who don't want to hear a woman singing even on tape, you can just watch the English subtitles - the changes are highlighted and obvious.

Let's go to the videotape.



Are we a Jewish country or are we a 'country of all its citizens'? If this anthem is adopted, we take a symbolic step toward the latter.

What could go wrong?

Martin Sherman adds:

The current focus of [post-Zionist] attack is the wording of the national anthem, “Hatikva,” which Haaretz tells us, “ignore[s] the existence of an Arab minority in the State of Israel – a minority for whom this land is also their land.”

According to the paper, “No Arab citizen who had any self-respect, political awareness or national consciousness could sing these words without committing the sins of hypocrisy and falsehood.”

Elsewhere, we are told why this is so: “Independence Day is not a holiday for Israeli Arabs. Sixty-four years ago, they lost their land and their national honor.”

I am trying to get my head around this. Is one of the nation’s major newspapers really calling on the public not only to understand the sorrow the Arab minority feels that the genocidal attempt of its ethnic-kinfolk to obliterate the Jewish population failed, but to take far-reaching steps to accommodate this sadness?

Really?

How are we to assuage their melancholy at having “lost their land and national honor” in their failed Judeocidal effort? Are Jews really expected to forgo the victory and to suppress the expression of their national identity to alleviate the discomfort of the defeated? One cannot but wonder what the consequences would have been had the fortunes of war been reversed? And how are we to restore their “national honor” (much less their ‘land”) – or to compensate them for their loss – without de-Judaizing Israel and deconstructing the Zionist ethos.

But that is what the post-Zionists are really aiming at. However, to achieve this goal of dismantling the status of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, they first have to achieve an intermediate goal: to decouple Israel from its Jewishness, to denude, and then break, the bond of kinship between the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

Hence the assault on the Jewish emblems – first the anthem, next the flag, then the Law of Return. After all, why should the Jewish Diaspora have unfettered access to the country and not the Palestinian diaspora?

This is a question the post-Zionists – and Haaretz – will doubtless be raising soon in editorials.

Unfortunately, Sherman has it right.

Handicapped rowing champion sings Hatikva at medal ceremony

When Moran Samuel won the gold medal at a pre-Paralympic international competition in Italy, the organizers did not have a recording of Israel's national anthem Hatikvah to play at the medals ceremony. They started playing some other anthem, and Samuel indicated that they were playing the wrong song.
So she asked for a microphone - and sang it herself.

The History of Hatikva

Perhaps you know this already, but I did not until recently and I found it interesting and Yom Ha'Atzmaut worthy.

I recently heard that when Israel was choosing a national anthem, the two finalists being considered were Hatikva, which was eventually selected as Israel's national anthem, and Shir HaMaalot - yeah, that one, the one we all sing by bentching with Yossele Rosenblatt's tune. I just heard that Hatikva beat out Shir HaMaalot by just one vote to be selected as the national anthem.

Being that I had never heard this interesting story before, I decided to research it and see what really happened. Research today means a comprehensive Google search, and I bring to you the results of what actually happened.

I will begin first with quoting sections of the Wikipedia entry on the history of Hatikva.

Hatikva

Hatikvah (Hebrew: הַתִּקְוָה‎‎, Hatiq'vah, lit. The Hope) is the national anthem of Israel. The anthem was written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew from Zolochiv (today in Lviv Oblast), who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s.
The anthem's theme revolves around the nearly 2000-year-old hope of the Jewish people to be a free and sovereign people in the Land of Israel, a national dream that would eventually be realized with the founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Composition
The text of Hatikvah was written by the Galician Jewish poet Naphtali Herz Imber in Zolochiv in 1878 as a nine-stanza poem named Tikvateynu (lit. "Our Hope"). In this poem Imber puts into words his thoughts and feelings in the wake of the establishment of Petah Tikva, one of the first Jewish settlements in Ottoman Palestine. Published in Imber's first book, Barkai (lit. "Morning Star"), the poem was subsequently adopted as the anthem of Hovevei Zion and later of the Zionist Movement at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. The text was later revised by the settlers of Rishon LeZion, subsequently undergoing a number of other changes.
The melody, from a common European folk tune, La Mantovana, was arranged by Samuel Cohen, an immigrant from Bessarabia.
The British Mandate government briefly banned its public performance in 1919, in response to an increase in Arab anti-Zionist political activity.
Adoption as national anthem
When the State of Israel was established in 1948, Hatikvah was unofficially proclaimed the national anthem. However, it did not officially become the national anthem until November 2004, when it 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).
In its modern rendering, the official text of the anthem incorporates only the first stanza and refrain of the original poem. The predominant theme in the remaining stanzas is the establishment of a sovereign and free nation in the Land of Israel, a hope largely seen as fulfilled with the founding of the State of Israel.

Religious objections to Hatikvah
Some observant Jews object to Hatikvah on the grounds that the anthem is too secular and lacks sufficient religious emphasis, such as not mentioning God or the Torah. Some Hareidim have mocked the song by switching the word "חופשי" (free, alluding to a secular Jew being free of mitzvot) with the word "קודשי" (holy), thus reading the line: "To be a holy nation", referring to the verse in Shemos 19:10 "וְאַתֶּם תִּהְיוּ לִי מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹש" (you shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation). (Some religious Zionists also replace the word "חופשי" for the word "קודשי" but do so quietly and without intent to mock.) Others have gone even further by appending the words "תשחקו בכדור" (play ball) at the end of the song, to mimic the USA's practice of yelling "play ball" at Major League Baseball games following the singing of its national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner".
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook objected to the secular thrust of Hatikvah and wrote an alternative anthem titled “HaEmunah” ("The Faith") in the hope that it would replace Hatikvah as the Israeli national anthem. Rav Kook did not object to the singing of Hatikvah (and in fact has endorsed it) as he had great respect for secular Jews, indicating that even in their work it was possible to see a level of kedushah (holiness).

Objections by non-Jewish Israelis
Some Arab Israelis object to Hatikvah due to its explicit allusions to Judaism. In particular, the text’s reference to the yearnings of “a Jewish soul” is often cited as preventing non-Jews from personally identifying with the anthem. Notably, Ghaleb Majadale, who in January 2007 became the first Muslim to be appointed as a minister in the Israeli cabinet, sparked a controversy when he publicly refused to sing the anthem, stating that the song was written for Jews only.
From time to time proposals have been made to change the national anthem or to modify the text in order to make it more acceptable to non-Jewish Israelis; however, no such proposals have succeeded in gaining broad support.

Now, as to the competition between Hatikva and SHir HaMaalot, it turns out that Hatikva was never officially accepted as the official national anthem until 2004. Hatikvah was voted over Shir Hama'alot as the anthem in the World Zionist Congress in 1933, after 36 years when both were popular and sung separately or together, at different venues. Prior to that, there were numerous votes held over the years and there was never a conclusive decision, as both songs were equally popular and supported. Therefore, they were also sung in many Jewish circles, together. In Israel it was adopted as the Israel National Anthem de facto - but not de jure until November 2004.

I don't know if in that final vote in 1933 Hatikva beat out Shir HaMaalot by only one vote, considering the popularity of Shir HaMaalot it is entirely possible, but it seems that Hatikva never really beat out the competition and only became adopted after many years because of the prominence it took over the years.

I wonder had Shir HaMaalot become the national anthem, would people segue into bentching immediately after singing it (such as the way people cheer "play ball" after hatikva)?