Israeli Folk Song “Hava Nagila“ (1915)

“Hava Nagila“ “Let us rejoice“) is an Israeli folk song traditionally sung at Jewish celebrations. It is perhaps the first modern Israeli folk song in the Hebrew language that has become a staple of band performers at Jewish weddings and bar/bat mitzvah celebrations. The melody is based on a Hassidic Nigun and it was composed in 1915 in Ottoman Palestine, when Hebrew was being revived as a spoken language for the first time in almost 2,000 years (since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE). For the first time, Jews were being encouraged to speak Hebrew as a common language, instead of Yiddish, Arabic, Ladino, or other regional Jewish languages.