IMBER, NAPHTALI HERZ

born 1856, Zloczow, Galicia, Austria-Hungary died Oct. 8, 1909, New York, N.Y., U.S. itinerant Hebrew poet whose poem Ha-Tiqva (The Hope), set to music, was the official anthem of the Zionist movement from 1933 and eventually became Israel's national anthem. Imber received a traditional Talmudic education, and in 1882 he went to Palestine with Laurence Oliphant, a Christian Zionist who employed him as a secretary. Imber probably wrote Ha-Tiqva in 1878, and a Jewish farmer in Palestine set it to the melody of a Moldovan-Romanian folk song in 1882. Imber's Ha-Tiqva and another poem he wrote that became a popular Zionist song, Mishmar ha-Yarden (The Watch on the Jordan), were first published in his verse collection Barkai (1886; Morning Star). After Oliphant died in 1888, Imber moved to England, and in 1892 he resettled in the United States, where he spent his later years in poverty.