A memorial bronze tablet honoring Naftali Herz Imber, author of the Hatikvah, the Israel national anthem, will be unveiled Friday morning on the building where the Hebrew poet died, on New York’s Lower East Side. Top civic and Jewish communal leaders will participate in the ceremony.
Mr. Imber, who died in 1909, spent the last 17 years of his life in the United States after years of wandering in Eastern Europe, England and the Middle East. The poem which was adopted as Israel’s national anthem following its re-establishment as an independent nation in 1948,was written by Imber at the age of twenty-two. For more than a generation before the founding of Israel, Hatikvah was the official anthem of the World Zionist movement.
Consul-General Simcha Pratt of the State of Israel will be one of the leading participants in the ceremony honoring Imber, whose “Hatikvah” will be sung at the Polo Grounds Sunday in celebration of Israel’s tenth anniversary. The anthem written by Imber will be played at the Polo Grounds by the 199th Army Band and the Band of the Third Naval District.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
