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.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd2v8kqjYwc
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…