Eli Sharabi and The Hope

It wasn’t written by a prophet. It wasn’t chosen by a committee.

It was carried in the pocket of a wandering poet, stitched to a borrowed melody, and flung into history by people who had nothing but hope.

It is sung with tears, not triumph.

In rooms of mourning. In halls of power. In youth movements and on refugee boats. In the camps, at Bergen-Belsen.

At funerals. At hostage protests. At moments when we are most divided, and need to remember who we are.

It was never meant to be easy.

Hatikvah is not perfect. It does not mention God. It does not speak of Torah or mitzvot. It is not a song of conquest or revenge.

It is the breath of a people who, for two thousand years, walked through exile, fire, and silence, but dared to keep dreaming anyway.

It wasn’t the lyrics that made it dangerous, it was the longing. The audacity of a people in exile to still believe they would come home.

Herzl tried to replace it. Rav Kook wrote a parallel anthem. Secular Zionists called it too nostalgic. Religious Jews called it not spiritual enough.

Still, the hope endured.

It echoed in the fields of Rishon LeZion, where Jewish immigrants sang by candlelight, after clearing rocks with their bare hands.

It was lifted in Basel, when the Uganda Plan passed when those who would not let go of Zion sang Hatikvah not in triumph, but in heartbreak.

“Our hope is not yet lost.” —Hatikvah

It carried through Bergen-Belsen, when survivors, starved, skeletal, and barely breathing sang it at their first Shabbat after the gates were opened. They sang it not because they were free. They sang it to remind the world that they were still here.

I’ve sung it at vigils, with tears I couldn’t swallow. I’ve sung it when I felt betrayed by silence. I’ve sung it in whispers too tired to stand. I know I’m not alone.

Eli Sharabi stood before the United Nations. He had been held captive for 491 days in Hamas tunnels. He was chained, starved, beaten, humiliated.

His hope was in reuniting with his family, only to return and find they were gone.

His wife, Lianne. His daughters, Noiya and Yael. Slaughtered in their safe room in Be’eri. His brother, Yossi murdered in captivity, waiting to be brought home for a proper burial.

He spoke of his pain. Of the chains that tore through his skin, the hunger that consumed him, the moment terrorists showed him a photo of his dead brother and laughed.

He spoke of Alon Ohel, still waiting to come home from the darkness, and how they would tap melodies on each other’s skin just to remember what music felt like.

He weighed 44 kilos when he was released, less than his youngest daughter.

And still he stood.

He stood at the UN, raised a photo of his family’s graves, and asked the question the world still hasn’t answered:

Where were you!

When he walked out of that chamber, where Israel is so often condemned and terror so rarely named Jews stood too, and we sang.

Not out of celebration. Out of defiance. Out of grief. Out of loyalty to every Jew who cannot sing for themselves.

Our hope is not yet lost.

We sang when they stood outside our synagogues shouting for our end, trying to break what they could never understand.

We sang it not for them, but for every Jew who ever whispered it in hiding,every child who still dares to dream in Hebrew.

Hatikvah is not simply a song. It is our declaration, our defiance, our birthright.

The miracle is not that we wrote those words. The miracle is that after everything, we still mean them.

As long as we do, as long as we endure and remember, as long as we keep singing through the silence,our hope is not yet lost.

So sing it.

Even when it trembles. Even when they don’t want to hear it. Because this is not just our anthem, it is our answer.

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