Singing National Anthems

When I was a student at Memorial Junior High School in New York, we stood each morning, put our hands over our hearts and recited The Pledge of Allegiance. On one particular morning, while the Vietnam War was in its final years, I did not feel like standing. I was 13 years old. I wasn’t taking a political stand. At that age, I didn't even know what it meant to take a political stand. I just didn’t feel like getting up from my seat that morning.

A Home Economics teachers, a rough woman whose name is lost to time, pulled me up by the scruff of my neck and castigated me publicly. How dare I not stand for The Pledge of Allegiance when she had a son fighting for America's freedom in Vietnam?

 

Despite my love of country music, I never did feel much for America’s Pledge of Allegiance or The Star Spangled Banner. I understood they held great power and pride for millions. I just didn’t feel anything personally.

It’s like my soul knew long ago that America was not my truest home.

Long before I connected deeply with Israel, I gave a talk at a Hadassah meeting. Before the meeting, the group sang HaTikvah, Israel’s national anthem.

I stood at the front of the room waiting to speak, embarrassed, because I didn’t know the words. I had no idea how much the singing of HaTikvah in a group of Jews would come to mean to me.

A few years before we made aliyah, when my unfulfilled longing to move to Israel had grown into a painful burden to bear, during a visit to Israel, I went with some friends to see an all women’s production of the story of the Book of Ruth. After the production, with the whole cast on the stage, the director came out to make some announcements.

 

“One of our lighting and tech crew members is leaving to join the Israeli army tomorrow,” she said. And then she proceeded to bless him, as parents do for their own children on Friday night, by reciting the Priestly Blessing. “I want to live in a country where such a thing as this can happen,” my soul shouted.

And then everyone sang Hatikvah and I begin to weep, covering my face with my hands, because the longing was so intense.

 

I’ve been an Israeli for almost six years. And there is still never a time I sing HaTikvah in a group and don’t get choked up.

 

L'hiyot am chofshi b'artzenu - To be a free people in our land. 

 

Chills.

 

 

In this clip from 1978, when it was still fashionable to support Israel, Barbra Steisand speaks by phone to former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and then sings my favorite version of HaTikvah.