The piece's lyrics are adapted from a work by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów, Austrian Galicia.

[1] In 1882, Imber emigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine and read his poem to the pioneers of the early Jewish villages—Rishon LeZion, Rehovot, Gedera, and Yesud Hama'ala.

[4] Cohen's musical adaptation served as a catalyst and facilitated the poem's rapid spread throughout the Zionist communities of Palestine.

[6] The British Mandate government briefly banned its public performance and broadcast from 1919, in response to an increase in Arab anti-Zionist political activity.

[7] [page needed] A former member of the Sonderkommando reported that the song was spontaneously sung by Czech Jews at the entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chamber in 1944.

The melody for "Hatikvah" is based from "La Mantovana", a 16th-century Italian song, composed by Giuseppe Cenci (Giuseppino del Biado) ca.

This melody gained wide currency in Renaissance Europe, under various titles, such as the Pod Krakowem (in Polish), Cucuruz cu frunza-n sus [Maize with up-standing leaves] (in Romanian)[10] and the Kateryna Kucheryava (in Ukrainian).

Cohen himself recalled many years later that he had hummed "Hatikvah" based on the melody from the song he had heard in Romania, "Carul cu boi" (the ox-driven cart).

[citation needed] In 2022 Roman Shumunov filmed a TV series titled As Long as in the Heart [he] about the Israeli youth encounter with The Holocaust.

[23] On 25 May 2021, four days after the ceasefire that ended the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Israeli singers Omer Adam and Noa Kirel released a pop remix of "Hatikvah" under the title "Hope".

[24] The official text of the Israeli national anthem corresponds to the first stanza and amended refrain of the original nine-stanza poem by Naftali Herz Imber.

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִקְוָתֵנוּ, הַתִּקְוָה בַּת שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִם, 𝄇 לִהְיוֹת עַם חָפְשִׁי בְּאַרְצֵנוּ, אֶרֶץ צִיּוֹן וִירוּשָׁלַיִם.𝄆 ‎ Kol ‘od balevav penimah Nefesh Yehudi homiyah, Ulfa’atey mizrach kadimah, ‘Ayin leTziyon tzofiyah;

‘Od lo avdah tikvatenu, Hatikvah bat shnot ’alpayim, 𝄆 Lihyot ‘am chofshi be’artzenu, ’Eretz Tziyon v'Yerushalayim.

As long as tears from our eyes Flow like benevolent rain, And throngs of our countrymen Still pay homage at the graves of our fathers.

As long as the feeling of love of nation Throbs in the heart of a Jew, 𝄆 We can still hope even today That a wrathful God may have mercy on us.

𝄇 Some people compare the first line of the refrain, "Our hope is not yet lost" ("עוד לא אבדה תקותנו‎"), to the opening of the Polish national anthem, "Poland Is Not Yet Lost" ("Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła") or the Ukrainian national anthem, "Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished" ("Ще не вмерла Україна; Šče ne vmerla Ukrajina").

This line may also be a Biblical allusion to Ezekiel's "Vision of the Dried Bones" (Ezekiel 37: "…Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost (Hebrew:אבדה תקותנו)"), describing the despair of the Jewish people in exile, and God's promise to redeem them and lead them back to the Land of Israel.

More specifically, Margalit and Halbertal cover the various responses towards "Hatikvah", which they establish as the original anthem of a Zionist movement, one that holds a 2,000-year-long hope of returning to the homeland ("Zion and Jerusalem") after a long period of exile.

As Margalit and Halbertal continue to discuss, "Hatikvah" symbolises for many Arab-Israelis the struggle of loyalty that comes with having to dedicate oneself to either their historical or religious identity.