Hava Nagila

Album: Jewish Songs (1922)
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Songfacts®:

  • This Hebrew wedding song is as well known among Gentiles as it is among Jews, usually as an instrumental.

    The melody appears to have originated among the Hassidim of Eastern Europe, probably no earlier than the 18th Century, but it was not until the 20th Century that words were added, in Palestine by Avraham Zvi Idelsohn - the father of Jewish musicology. The words are taken from Psalms, and it was first published in 1922.

    By the 1950s it had established itself in the United States, and has been performed in countless films, by both Jewish and non-Jewish artists. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England

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