"Am Yisrael Chai"[a] is a Jewish solidarity anthem and a widely used expression of Jewish peoplehood and an affirmation of the continuity of the Jewish people. The phrase gained popularity during the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, when Jewish songwriter Shlomo Carlebach composed the song for the movement's 1965 solidarity rally in New York City.
The Forward has placed "Am Yisrael Chai" second only to "Hatikvah", the current national anthem of Israel, as "an anthem of the Jewish people".
History
"Am Yisrael Chai" graffiti in Tel Aviv
A version of "Am Yisrael Chai" appeared as early as 1895 in a Zionist songbook.[1] It was set to many different tunes,[1][2] and printed with sheet music in Popular Jewish Melodies (1927).[3] The slogan was also popular in Zionist prose literature.[4][5]
Another important reference to "Am Yisrael Chai" was at the Second World Jewish Conference in 1933, summoned to fight Hitler's new Nazi regime through economic boycott. Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise ended the final address by declaring to the crowd:
"We are prepared to defend ourselves against the will of Hitler Germany to destroy. We must defend ourselves because we are a people which lives and wishes to live. My last word that I wish to speak to you is this – our people lives — Am Yisrael chai!"[6]
In the songbook Songs of My People (circa 1938), compiled in Chicago, the song "Am Yisrael Chai" appears. The lyrics are the words "Am Yis-ra-el, am Yis-ra-el chai. [/] Am-cha Yis-ra-el chai," in varying order.[7]
On April 20, 1945, five days after the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated, British Army chaplain Rabbi Leslie Hardman led a Friday evening Shabbat service for a few hundred survivors at the camp. Knowing the service was being recorded by Patrick Gordon Walker of the BBC radio service, a Jewish army chaplain proclaimed "Am Yisrael chai!, the children of Israel still liveth" after the group sang the Zionist anthem Hatikvah at the conclusion of the service.[8][9][10]
BBC recording from 20 April 1945 of Jewish survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp singing "Hatikvah", followed by the shout of "Am Yisrael chai!", only five days after their liberation by Allied forces.
The front of the stage of a concert in Munich (in 1945/1946) by the St. Ottilien Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra displayed the words "Am Yisrael chai".[11]
The phrase gained popular use in 1965, when Jewish songwriter Shlomo Carlebach composed "Am Yisrael Chai" as the solidarity anthem of the Soviet Jewry movement at the request of Jacob Birnbaum, founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. Carlebach and Birnbaum knew each other, and their respective grandfathers had met at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel. By 1965, Carlebach was already popular for his melodies put to Hebrew prayers, and Birnbaum reached out to him in the hopes of composing a song ahead of a planned major SSSJ rally in front of the Soviet Mission to the United Nations in New York on April 4, 1965.[13]
While in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, Carlebach wrote and first performed "Am Yisrael Chai" before a group of youth in Prague. On April 2, 1965, Carlebach phoned Birnbaum with news that the song was completed. Carlebach publicly performed the song for the first time at rally on April 4. The song became the centerpiece of the SSSJ's annual solidarity rally between 1972 and 1991.[13][14]
According to musicologist Tina Frühauf, Carlebach's lyrics evoke a sense of the Jewish nation, Jewish survival, and an affirmation of Jewish identity.[15] Birnbaum interpreted the song's dominant phrase to signify "a rebirth of Jewish life, including music" in the post-Holocaust world.[13]
The song and its core phrase widely became a defiant expression and affirmation of Jewish continuity, especially during times of war and heightened antisemitism.[16] The song was sung on the second day of the Six Day War and at the end of the Yom Kippur War.[17] In 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inscribed the words "Am Yisrael Chai" in the guestbook of the Wannsee Villa in Berlin.[18] Some tour groups visiting Masada shout "Am Yisrael Chai" to invert the emphasis on martyrdom and resistance at the fort; life is the point, according to Professor Theodore Sasson.[19]
After an Israeli court rendered a guilty verdict for John Demjanjuk in 1986, two songs were sung outside the courthouse: "Ani Ma'amin," which was sung in concentration camps, and "Am Yisrael Chai," which Professor Glenn Sharfman suggests symbolized that the trial and verdict symbolized both a remembrance of the past and a statement of the future.[20]
The people of Israel live, our Father still lives!
The song's lyrics are derived from Genesis 45:3, "Joseph said to his brothers, 'I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?'" (Hebrew: הַעוֹד אָבִי חַי)[28] Carlebach added the words "Am Yisrael Chai" (the nation of Israel lives) and, for the song's refrain, changed the words "is my father still alive" to "our father is still alive" (Hebrew: עוֹד אָבִינוּ חַי)[29] in a possible reference to the Jewish tradition that "Jacob/Israel did not die." According to musicologist Tina Frühauf, Carlebach changed the reference from Joseph's father to God, "as the father of the children of Israel."[15]
Legacy
During the Israel-Hamas war, The Forward, a major Jewish news organization, placed "Am Yisrael Chai" second only to Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel, as "an anthem of the Jewish people".[13] Judaic scholar Arnold Eisen has called "Am Yisrael Chai" the "civil religion" of American Jewry.[30]
^Werner, Alfred (1949). "Review of The Birth of Israel; We the People". Jewish Social Studies. 11 (3): 310. ISSN0021-6704. JSTOR4464834. The arch of Titus bears an ancient inscription, proclaiming the end of the Jewish nation. Visiting Rome, last year, the American journalist, Quentin Reynolds, noticed another, more recent inscription on the same monument. It was, in all likelihood, a Palestinian soldier serving with the Allies who had carved these three Hebrew words into one of the supporting columns: Am Yisrael chai, 'The People of Israel Lives.' This would have been an apt title for the first third of the present book, a splendid job of reporting on Israel's life-and-death struggle in the spring of 1948.
