By Rivy Poupko Kletenik,
When I was growing up, “Hava Nagila” was the typical, clichéd Jewish must-be-played song — now suddenly it’s “in” for real. I am being sent e-mail after e-mail with a link to a YouTube video of “Hava Nagila” that shatters its uncool standing. It got me thinking: What’s the story behind this resilient tune and where are we going with this?
Hava Nagila: It’s the song that every Jew can sing in his or her sleep. It’s a virtual litmus test for being Jewish — hum a few bars and you’re in; throw in a few mispronounced words, extra points! What would a simcha be without it? Your question brings back a wave of memories. I can almost taste the chopped liver! The song is unquestionably on the top of the all-time Jewish hit parade. To think that it’s having a cool comeback is nothing short of inspiring. No tune deserves it more.
Keep in mind, there are reasons why phenomena become beloved and über-popular — they embody a certain classic truth. “Hava Nagila,”— “Let’s Be Happy and Joyful!” is a profound Jewish sentiment that we are very serious about! In fact, the song’s words may be a paraphrase of two different verses from Psalms, “This is the day that God has made; let us be joyful (nagila) and be happy (venismicha) with it!” and “Serve the Lord with gladness” (b’simcha); come before His presence with singing,” (b’ranana). Quite the pedigree.
The exact words of the song are:
Ha-va nagila, ha-va nagila
Ha-va nagila, ve nismecha
Ha-va nagila, ha-va nagila
Ha-va nagila, ve nismecha
Ha-va neranena, ha-va neranena
Ha-va neranena ve nismecha
Hava neranena, hava neranena
Ha-va neranena ve nismecha
U-ru, u-ru a-him
U-ru ahim belev sameach, u-ru
ahim belev sameach
U-ru ahim belev sameach, u-ru
ahim belev sameach
U-ru ahim, u-ru ahim, u-ru
ahim Belev sameach.
Translated:
Come! Let’s rejoice and be happy;
Come! Let’s sing;
Arise, brothers, with a happy heart!”
What is this preoccupation with joy and happiness? Is this really authentically Jewish? Some individuals — the Lenny Bruces among us — are fond of depicting Jews as a dour bunch of kvetches who never celebrate, but choose to observe. We’re portrayed often as an anxious tribe fixated on persecutions and anti-Semitism, on fasting, praying and intellectualizing.
This unbridled joy laid unabashedly bare for all to click on in a plethora of YouTube options seems decidedly not Jewish! Cue to the videos — you can catch anyone from Harry Belafonte to Bob Dylan singing or playing this ode to joy. But is it Jewish? I am here to tell you that being happy is a part of being Jewish! This song tells it like it is.
The notion of serving God through joy is fundamental to our practice, but may, unfortunately, have been lost in translation. I call your attention to this scene of elation and rapture: King David’s passionate, unchecked joy at bringing the Ark to Jerusalem.
David dances before the Lord with such demonstrative euphoria that his wife Michal is shamed — she has never seen this before — and she is the daughter of the immediate past king. She is uncomfortable with this expression of raw, primal jubilation. Are we up there in the window with her looking down at David? Are we also snobbishly unable to express this kind of unrefined joy?
I am not sure that it is snooty sophistication as much as the dreadful weight of history that stymies our exhilaration quotient. That moment of David’s joy is unparalleled in Jewish history in its simple innocence. The Temple of Solomon, with its elaborate construction, intricacy of labor and years of planning, did not produce the pure happiness of David’s dance to Jerusalem.
Millennia of historical complexities have robbed us of this pure joy. It is hard to laugh and sing after the destruction of Temples, persecutions, and the Holocaust. Our reactions to tragedy have precisely been this diminution of joy. “If I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy” is a vow that we do not take lightly.
No wedding is complete without the breaking of a glass, no home complete without the remembrance of the destroyed house of God, and no day passes when we do not mourn the loss of the idyllic days of David. We are good at mourning; fast days become us, and, so we ask, where does “Hava Nagila” come in?
A little history, courtesy of much Internet surfing: Marc De Bruyn writes, and I paraphrase, that Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, the father of Jewish musicology, is the person responsible for writing “Hava Nagila.” Three years after World War I, Idelsohn returned to Jerusalem. The Turks were out, the British were in. There was the Balfour Declaration, and the yishuv was celebrating. Idelsohn needed a good, crowd-pleasing number to end his concert, but he didn’t have one. But he did have a music file, and his hand fell on a Sadigura niggun sung by Hassidim.
He arranged the piece in four parts, put some simple Hebrew lyrics to it, and performed it in 1918 for the celebration of the British victory in Palestine and the Balfour Declaration.
Idelsohn documented this part of the transmigration of this melody in Volume 9 of his Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies. After his death, Moshe Nathanson may have claimed authorship. Fran Manushikin, author of a children’s book about “Hava Nagila” puts it more collaboratively: Professor A.Z. Idelsohn and his young student Moshe Nathanson who, by making “a sad song happy,” created the joyful tune.
Finally, the Ohr Sameach Web site claims it was composed by Klausenberg Hassidim, who stressed rising above difficulties and keeping one’s spirits high. Later, the young Zionist movement adopted the song, and it eventually spread to signify celebration for Jews all over the world — can’t argue with that.
I’m glad you asked the question. I confess I’m starting to have a “Hava Nagila” fetish myself. It started when my daughter, fittingly named Gilah, e-mailed me a Ha’aretz article about the Lauren Rose “Hava Nagila” music video competing for the United Kingdom’s best Christmas song. The unbridled — to put it mildly — joy in that video evoked an odd pride and sense of triumph in me. Hey world, we Jews, we are still celebrating — davka, despite everything — we can and should know joy. “Hava Nagila” is assuredly a blast from the past, but we can make it the text for what’s next!