Copy Rites
Posted in General on April 19th, 2013 by Eugene Finerman – 6 CommentsI will be going to choir practice with more than my usual share of guilt. I can’t read music but I manage to sing within an octave of the correct note. My dyspeptic tendency to belch in the middle of a hymn is almost a tradition at our synagogue; it is like being my own metronome. No, this is a crisis of conscience. I am an accessory to a crime–and my choir is going to sing it.
If you have never heard Hatikva, the Israeli National Anthem, then you also have never heard Smetana’s “Die Moldau.”
Perhaps the Israeli National Anthem should be renamed “Chutzpah.” At least plagiarize a Jewish composer! Rodgers and Hammerstein may offer this paean to Zion, “Chaim Every Mountain.” Irving Berlin could have anticipated Israel’s precarious situation: “You Can Get Imans With a Gun.” For a more spiritual tone, George Bizet might lend “Torah Adore.”
(John Mellencamp is Gentile; otherwise I would have suggested “Herzl So Good.”)
But here is my choice for the Israeli National Anthem. It even means “Yes, Yes” in Hebrew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDbFbZCWhj4
p.s. For more on Monsieur Offenbach…