(RNS) — Let me tell you the story of a Jew from Ukraine.
His name is Naftali Herz Imber, and he was born in 1856.
In 1878, he wrote a poem — “Tikvateinu,” “Our Hope”:
Our hope is not yet lost,
The ancient hope,
To return to the land of our ancestors;
The city where David encamped.As long as in his heart within,
A soul of a Jew still yearns,
And onward towards the ends of the east,
His eye still looks towards Zion.
In 1882, Imber emigrated to Palestine. People fell in love with his poem. It was around that time that settlers founded Petach Tikvah, the doorway to hope. So, that word “tikvah” had major resonance.
Eventually, the lyrics found a melody, and the melody became a song — “Hatikvah.”
What was the origin of its melody? This is a great mystery.
Some say that it was an Italian song from the 16th century, which then became a Romanian melody, which then became a Ukrainian melody. Others say the melody comes from the “Moldau” by Smetana (At minute 1:19 in the linked video).
But the “Moldau” is in a major key, and “Hatikvah” is in a minor key (as so many Jewish songs are), which makes the melody sound sad; “Hatikvah” is the very opposite of a sad song. It is a song of joy, and it is a song of hope.
In 1933, “Hatikva” became the anthem of the Zionist movement because it is a song of joy, and it is a song of hope.
In 1944, as they entered the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a group of Czech Jews spontaneously broke into that song. Even as SS guards beat them in their final moments of life, they continued to sing it.
When Imber wrote “Hatikvah,” he could have chosen any number of words and images from the Jewish past.
What was the main image that he chose? It was, “our hope is not yet lost.”
That image comes from the prophet Ezekiel. The Babylonians had just destroyed the kingdom of Judah. The prophet saw a valley of dry bones. Those cadavers said: Avdah tikvateinu, “our hope is lost.”
Imber said: No, our bones are not dried up and no, our hope is not lost. We will rise, once again.
In honor of today — Yom haAtzmaut, Israel independence day — let me offer you a Hebrew lesson.
You already know the first word. Tikvah. “Hope.”
Tikvah is related to the Hebrew word kav, which means rope. Hope is the rope upon which we climb. Hope is the rope that binds us together.
Kav can also mean to bring together — like the waters of a mikveh, a ritual bath used for purification.
Now, the second word — mashber. It means “crisis.” It seems to be the eternal Jewish condition. The definition of a Jewish text message: “Start worrying. Details to follow.”
The word mashber comes from the root, shavar, which means “broken.” So, yes: a crisis is when something is broken. But, in ancient Hebrew, the word “mashber” meant something else. It was a birth stool, upon which a woman would crouch when giving birth.
So: a crisis means that something is broken — and a crisis is also a time of birth.
The major theme of Jewish history is that with every crisis, something gets broken. And every time something gets broken, something is born.
A few examples:
In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians destroyed the southern kingdom of Judah, they sent the Judeans into exile in Babylon. Those Judeans carried scraps of their story with them. Out of those scraps, anonymous scribes created the Torah. The Babylonian destruction was the crisis, the brokenness – and out of that, the Torah was born.
In 70 C.E., the Romans destroyed the second Temple, and destroyed Judean independence. The sages fled to the city of Yavneh, and they created a Judaism without a temple, and without sacrifices. It would center on prayer, worship, and Torah study. The Roman destruction was the crisis, the brokenness – and out of that, rabbinic Judaism was born.
In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain, and five years later, the Jews were likewise expelled from Portugal. Some Jews made their way to Safed in northern Israel. Those refugees believed that not only were they in exile — but the world, existence, even God was in exile. They imagined that by doing mitzvot, they could redeem those exiles. The expulsion from Spain was the crisis, the brokenness — and that crisis gave birth to kabbalah — Jewish mysticism.
In 1945 — exactly 80 years ago — the Jews emerged from the Holocaust. In the displaced persons camps, they had babies — the single greatest Jewish population explosion in history. Those Jews knew that the Jewish story was not about death. They knew that the Jewish story was about life.
So, too, in America: People returned from the war, got married, had children, and built Jewish communities. The Holocaust was the crisis, the brokenness — the greatest brokenness in Jewish history — and that crisis gave birth to the renewal of Judaism.
In October 7, 2023, many Jews have returned to a sense of Jewish community. They have sought Jewish connections, Jewish learning, and Jewish meaning — in what communal leaders have called the “surge.” My own learning organization, Wisdom Without Walls, is a product of that surge. October 7 was the crisis, the brokenness — and that crisis has given birth to a new kind of Jewish renewal.
Back to “Hatikvah.” It is not just the national anthem of both the state of Israel, and the entire Jewish people. That is because the greatest invention is hope — the idea that tomorrow might be better than today. That is the trademark of the Jewish people.
As David Broza sang in “Yihyeh Tov” (“Things Will Be Better”)
I look out the window, and it makes me very sad.
Spring has left; who knows when it will return?
The clown has become a king; the prophet has become a clown;
And I have forgotten the way, but I am still here.
Things will be better.
Sometimes, I am broken.
But on this night, I will stay with you…
People live with stress, looking for a reason to breathe,
And between hatred and murder, they speak about peace…
What do we do when clowns become kings (both in Israel and in America), and prophets become clowns?
We work through the brokenness.
We find reasons to breathe.
For, your final Hebrew lesson.
The word for “breathe” is also the word for “soul.”
Let us find our souls.