I had the good fortune recently to acquire something truly remarkable for my collection – a rare first edition of Barkai, published in 1886 in Jerusalem, Eretz Yisrael. For those unfamiliar, Barkai (The Morning Star), is the first collection of poems by the enigmatic and mercurial Naftali Herz Imber, the man whose pen gifted us Tikvatenu, the poem that would ultimately become Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem. To hold this book is to hold a piece of our people’s soul – a fragment of that sacred longing which kept us alive through two thousand years of exile.
Imber’s life reads like a parable from our national story: brilliant, erratic, inspired, and tragic. Born in 1856 in the Galician town of Złoczów, he was a wunderkind in a traditional Orthodox home, composing Hebrew verse before most children even mastered Chumash. At age 10, he was already weaving words that hinted at the fire to come. A poem of his later won the praise of Emperor Franz Joseph himself – an honor from the crown, though his heart always beat to the rhythms of Zion.
There are competing legends about the genesis of Tikvatenu. One claims it was written in Romania in the late 1870s. Another, with more colorful flair, says it poured from him during a Purim seudah in Gedera, fueled by drink and dreams. Regardless of where or when, the words ring eternal: “Lashuv le’eretz avotenu” – to return to the land of our forefathers. It’s a line that pierced through exile and planted itself deep in the Jewish soul.
By 1887, a young oleh named Shmuel Cohen, from Rishon LeZion, took those heartfelt lines and married them to a haunting Moldovan-Romanian folk tune. That melody, perhaps providential in its origins, sounded strikingly like the strains of Smetana’s Vltava, yet became wholly ours once paired with Jewish hope. From there, Hatikvah began its journey – sung in the vineyards of Zichron Yaakov, in the synagogues of the Old Yishuv, and eventually, at the Zionist Congress as its closing hymn.
Still, it took time before Hatikvah became officially the anthem of the Jewish State. For decades it remained unofficial, beloved, and ever-present, until finally – 56 years after statehood – it was formally ratified in 2004. The words never changed much, only refined to reflect a modern Zionist vision. But the essence was always there: hope, return, and redemption.
Imber, meanwhile, wandered – both physically and spiritually. He traveled through the shtetls of Europe, journeyed to Ottoman Palestine, and even served as secretary to the Christian Zionist Sir Laurence Oliphant (yes, history is full of ironies). He lived in Haifa, studied watchmaking in Beirut, and eventually made his way to the United States, where he would live out his days in poverty, sustained by the charity of others, (most notably by Judge Mayer Sulzberger) and the strength of his pen.
He married a Protestant doctor who converted to Judaism, a marriage as stormy and brief as his many travels. Alcohol shadowed him until the end. And yet, at his levayah in 1909, in New York, thousands came. They sang Hatikvah as they accompanied this broken poet to his resting place, unknowingly returning him in spirit to the land he never stopped loving.
His body, too, came home – eventually. In 1953, his remains were brought to Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem. And so, the man who wandered the world with a poem in his pocket finally returned to the homeland his poem helped dream into being.
Imber wasn’t just a poet; he was a mystic. He dabbled in Kabbalah, translated esoteric works, and even launched a mystical journal titled Uriel, which lasted a single issue. He was eccentric, troubled, and misunderstood; but he was also prophetic. His was a soul too vast for the world he inhabited.
There’s something heartbreakingly poetic about it all. The man who gave us our anthem of hope, of return, of redemption, died alone in exile. But in death, he fulfilled what he wrote. He came back; not in body, at first, but in spirit. And with every voice that rises to sing Hatikvah, Naftali Herz Imber lives again.
