armadilThis video presents Israel’s national anthem, HaTikvah (The Hope), with on-screen Hebrew, English and transliterated subtitles. Adapted from a poem written in 1877 by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Eastern Europe, the lyrics reflect the Jews’ 2,000-year-old hope of returning to the Land of Israel and reclaiming it as a sovereign nation. Hatikvah was chosen as the anthem of the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and unofficially adopted as the national anthem upon the establishment of the state in 1948, although it was not officially proclaimed as such until 2004, when an edited version was sanctioned by the Knesset. The melody, derived from La Mantovana, a 16th-century Italian song, was set by Samuel Cohen in 1888.