Hatikvah

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

Back behind the school, under a corrugated

tin awning, propping ourselves up against

the half-filled bike rack, the late spring days

already too hot for most to ride bikes to school,

A.V. and I practice singing Hatikvah off

a transliterated sheet.

We had carefully chosen the place, distant

from the hubbub of our lunchtime recess. 

For the other kids — A.V. was in fifth grade,

me in fourth — would likely have razzed us

practicing a Hebrew song.  We two were the only

Jews in the school, and we kept it on the QT.

We lived on egg ranches with parents

who did not fit the mold of either farmers nor

So Cal rural residents in the 1950’s.  My folks,

Manhattanites, came post-war to California, my 

mother to escape the cold, my father dutiful.

A.V.’s folks, on the other hand, had the more

dramatic story. His mother, elegant and French, 

his father, a Litvak, off to Zion, then to fight in Spain,

barely surviving and repatriated to the Proletarian

Homeland, later air-dropped into Poland.

The two met in, and survived, Auschwitz.  And ended

up in the San Gabriel Valley (LA’s other one!). 

Raising chickens and two kids, and, like my

folks in the ’50’s, keeping their politics —

Left, more Left, yet even more Left — under

wraps in a town whose most famous boast of

the day was as the headquarters of 

America’s only homegrown Fascist group.

Some old Israel contact of A.V.’s dad placed a kibbutznik,

sent to California to help out a local

Zionist-Marxist group, on their ranch. He corralled

as many Jewish children as he could find locally for 

membership.  As the parents were often close to,

or members of, the Party, Zionism was viewed

with suspicion, but, on the other hand (always another

hand), even the most reluctant nationalist Jew in 1960 

was hollowed out by the oh-so recent events, and

thus was scintillated by the stories of pioneers and

survivors creating a state and refuge.  So the 

emissary kibbutznik worked the farm, organized

the kids for the youth group, and encouraged the romance

of redeeming the land and people with discipline and

song.  To earn our membership and the coveted

blue shirt — hultza khula — A.V. and I needed to 

sing Hatikva.  We neither knew nor read

Hebrew, so we worked off the transliteration.

We spent a week at the bike rack, managing 

to memorize a foreign song which only had

a distant meaning, if that.  Years later, I finally 

figured out the meaning of the line that 

cracked us up: Our Hope Is Two Thousand Years 

Old.  The word “Years” was transliterated as

“Shnot.” What’s this song about “shnot”?

What else does a nine year-old think?

That Friday night at our meeting, A.V. and I

sang, likely off-key, from memory, the

words, and didn’t even start laughing

when we got to the “shnot.”

The leaders, only teenagers themselves,

loosely supervised by the kibbutznik emissary,

who could not have been more than in his twenties,

presented us with the blue shirt, signifying

our membership in the youth movement to

build the Zionist future.

Neither A.V. nor I made it to kibbutz life, although

some of our friends did for longer and shorter

durations.  And we’ve lost track of each other,

more or less.  But I learned the words to the song,

and eventually even the meaning, and,

now, especially now, I’m glad I have it

imprinted in my heart.

Dennis Gura is a father, husband, and an engaged and serious Jew who tries to understand a complex and confusing world as best as possible. A native Angeleno, he has been deeply engaged in Jewish thought and experiences his entire life–the ethnic, the ethical, the secular, and the religious.  He was privileged to study at Machon Pardes in 1982-83, and has since bounced around various LA synagogues and Jewish groups.

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit his Substack page:https://dennisgura.substack.com