Singing “Hatikva” at the Yom HaZikaron commemoration at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, from left to right: Eitan Ben Zeev (shin shin), Mia Ostrovsky (shin shin), Or Kashi (Jewish Agency for Israel Fellow), then seven Israeli women from the Yad Mordechai delegation – Shuli Orit- Schneider, Ziv Eldan Harrari, Sivan Chen Sardam, Shani Rieger, Ofer Hemo, Maya Derfner- Shifman and Gili Degani.
Written in 1886 by European Jewish poet Naphtali Herz Imber
“Hatikvah” (‘The Hope’) is sung annually at Milwaukee’s Yom HaZikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) commemoration, and by Jews elsewhere around the world.
Yom HaZikaron honors Israel’s victims of terror and fallen soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, and it was held locally this year on April 20. Visitors from the Gaza-envelope kibbutz, Yad Mordechai, attended the commemoration.
The visit from Yad Mordechai is one more step in a continuing relationship with the local Jewish community, after the Jewish Agency for Israel paired kibbutzim with different American communities. Yad Mordechai is paired with Milwaukee, through the Community2Gether program, Partnership2Gether and Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
“Hatikvah” is the national anthem of Israel, written in 1878 by European Jewish poet Naphtali Herz Imber, representing a dream of return to the Jewish homeland:
Hatikva translated
As long as in the heart within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And toward the eastern edges, onward,
An eye gazes toward Zion.Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope that is two-thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The Land of Zion, Jerusalem.
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