Ha-Tikvah (Eng. hope) is one of the most important musical symbols of Judaism in modern times. Developed from a poem that described the poet's yearning for Zion, it entered into the folklore treasures of Jewish Palestine (Yishuv) as a song, and became the emblem of the Zionist movement until the newly founded state of Israel finally adopted it as the national anthem.

The genesis of Ha-Tikvah is closely linked to the beginnings of the Zionist settlement of Palestine from the 1880s (Aliyah; Ḥoveve Tsiyon). It begins in Romanian Iaşi. In 1877, the poet Naphtali Herz Imber (1856–1…