"Hatikvah" (Hebrew: הַתִּקְוָה‎, HaTiqvah, lit. The Hope) is the national anthem of Israel. Its lyrics are adapted from a poem written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów, province of Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, (today, Zolochiv, Ukraine). Imber wrote the first version of his poem in 1877 while being hosted as a guest by a Jewish scholar in the city of Iasi, Romania. The romantic anthem's theme reflects the nearly 2000-year-old hope of the Jewish people to return to the Land of Israel—their ancient homeland—and to restore it and reclaim it as a sovereign nation.

The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naphtali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów, a city often referred to by its nickname, "The City of Poets" in the province of Galicia, Austro-Hungary, (today Zolochiv, Ukraine). N.H.Imber emigrated to Eretz Israel in the early 1880s and lived in two or more of the first Jewish colonies . The foundation of Hatikvah is Imber's nine-stanza poem named Tikvatenu (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 (Jerusalem, 1886) called Barkai (lit: "The Shining Morning Star"), the poem was subsequently adopted as an anthem by the "Hovevei Zion" and later by 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.

Israel Anthem Text

Hatikvah
As long as deep
in the heart,
The soul of a
Jew yearns,
And towards
the East
An eye looks to
Zion,
Our hope is not
yet lost,
The hope of two
thousand years,
To be a free
people in our
land,
The land of
Zion and
Jerusalem.

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