The Hope/HaTikvah

Some people know this about me and some probably do not, but I was born in Jerusalem, Israel. My family still lives in Israel, so every year on May 14th, the Gregorian anniversary of the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948, I find myself thinking about the country a little differently. Not just politically or historically, but emotionally. Certain songs, memories, and ideas seem to rise closer to the surface this time of year, especially the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.” You can listen to the anthem here. (Fun fact, my mom played in this very orchestra for many years, which is why I chose this particular clip, even though the sound isn't great.)

“Hatikvah” translates to “The Hope.” I have always found it interesting that Israel’s anthem centers itself around hope rather than triumph or military victory. There is something emotionally revealing about that choice. The song emerged out of exile and longing, written before the modern state even existed. Long before Israel became a political reality, there were generations of Jewish people who continued orienting themselves emotionally toward the possibility of home, return, and belonging. The anthem carries that feeling all the way through it.

The opening lines read:

“As long as in the heart within a Jewish soul still yearns…”

The entire anthem is built around yearning. It assumes that human beings are people who ache toward things. Toward home, toward safety, toward connection, toward meaning. There is a kind of emotional honesty in it that I think resonates far beyond Israel itself.

Working as a couples therapist out of a group practice called Mt. Hope Counseling Center, I spend a great deal of time thinking about hope as well, although usually in a very different context. Couples often come into therapy after years of painful interactions with each other. By the time they sit down in the office, they are frequently exhausted by the cycle they have fallen into. They have had the same fight so many times that they begin assuming the future will simply be a repetition of the past. After enough hurt, people stop imagining different outcomes.

That is part of why hope has so much to do with imagination psychologically. Not fantasy or denial, but the ability to still picture a future that is not completely controlled by present pain. In relationships, hope often begins when someone risks imagining that their spouse may actually respond differently this time. That maybe the conversation does not have to collapse the way it always has before. That maybe there is still something alive underneath all the defensiveness and hurt.

One of my favorite professors at Fuller Theological Seminary was Cameron Lee, and he left a lasting impression on me in the way he talked about hope inside relationships. He described hope less as blind optimism and more as a willingness to continue emotionally investing in another person despite uncertainty, disappointment, and fear. I think about that often in therapy work because most couples who eventually heal are not couples who avoided pain. Usually they are couples who somehow kept turning back toward each other even after pain narrowed their imagination of what was possible.

David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel on May 14 1948 in Tel Aviv, Israel, beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism.

That is part of why “Hatikvah” continues to affect me emotionally. The anthem does not sound naïve to me. Jewish history does not really allow for naïveté. When the anthem says:

“Our hope is not yet lost…”

it carries a kind of restrained defiance to it. Not certainty. Not denial. Just the refusal to completely surrender the future. A great deal of therapy involves helping people recover imagination after pain has shrunk it. Hurt has a way of convincing people that tomorrow can only be more of today. Hope reopens the possibility that something else may still exist ahead of them.

Near the end of the anthem is the line:

“As long as the eye looks eastward…”

I have always loved that image because it captures orientation more than arrival. The song is less about having fully arrived and more about continuing to turn toward something. Continuing to long. Continuing to hope. Even after exile, grief, disappointment, conflict, and suffering, there is still some part of the human person capable of reaching toward restoration rather than giving itself over completely to despair.