Let’s begin with a song, to wake us all up. Your starter for ten is: whose national anthem are these sentiments taken from?

Heroes of the sea, noble people,
Valiant and immortal nation,
Raise once again today
The splendour of ???????!
Among the haze of memory,
Oh Fatherland, one feels the voice
Of your distinguished forefathers,
That shall lead you on to victory!

To arms, to arms!
Over land, over sea,
To arms, to arms!
For the Fatherland, fight!
Against the cannons, march on, march on!

Let the echo of an offence
Be the sign for a comeback.

Ten points if you spotted this as the national anthem of quiet little Portugal. A bonus of twenty if you know the back story of how this became Portugal’s national anthem. No? Well, let me plug this gap in your education.

England and Portugal, as you may know, are the co-signatories of the oldest alliance still in force. The Treaty of Windsor was signed on 9 May, 1386, 638 years ago, and is still active today. However, despite the alliance, relations have not always been amicable between these two great erstwhile maritime powers and imperial nations.

In the mid-19^th Century, Portugal strove to consolidate its control of territories in Southern Africa, creating a ‘rose-coloured map’ of contiguous control of a large area of land linking its colonies of Mozambique and Angola, passing through what are now Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, and essentially offering a Portuguese land route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. England disputed Portuguese claims to these territories, and eventually issued the British ultimatum in 1890.

This was a memorandum sent to the Portuguese Government by Lord Salisbury on 11 January 1890 in which he demanded the withdrawal of the Portuguese troops from the areas where Portuguese and British interests in Africa overlapped. It meant that the UK was now claiming sovereignty over territories, some of which had been claimed as Portuguese for centuries. Within a year or so, Portugal had, with scarcely a struggle, acquiesced to the demands, an action seen by many Portuguese as a national humiliation. This led ultimately to the fall of the government, and contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy 20 years later.

In response to the ultimatum, republican Portuguese composed a patriotic protest march, which was adopted, after a democratic government replaced the monarchy, as the national anthem.

All of which is merely an introduction to this week’s topic: a look at national anthems. If you want a hook to hang it on, consider the fact that the world will, over the next two weeks, be listening to a lot of national anthems, at the Paris Olympics. (Portugal’s anthem may not feature, since Portugal won its first gold medal at its 16^th Olympics, in 1984, and in the nine subsequent Games has won only another four.)

The Portuguese national anthem celebrates a glorious history, while wryly recognising that things have gone a bit downhill since then. “Portugal has not perished…Let the echo of an offence be the sign for a comeback”.

Compare that to Britain’s national anthem (especially the verses that never get sung).

God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King!

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks…

…Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world o’er.

No recognition there that things have gone downhill! Rather a declaration that, with Charles on his throne, and God on their (our?) side, the British will conquer all enemies and, simultaneously, teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

Our next exhibit is the French national anthem. Composed overnight during the French revolution, and reflecting the invasion of France by Prussian and Austrian armies, it does not pull its punches.

Arise, children of the Fatherland
Our day of glory has arrived
Against us the bloody flag of tyranny
is raised; the bloody flag is raised.
Do you hear, in the countryside
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?
They’re coming right into your arms
To cut the throats of your sons, your comrades!

To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions
Let’s march, let’s march
That their impure blood
Should water our fields.

Banned outright from 1804-1830, for its revolutionary associations, it was officially reinstated only in 1879.

Which brings us to the American national anthem, and a nuanced change. The war and bloodshed are confined here to the country’s foundational struggle, like La Marseillaise but unlike God Save the King or A Portuguesa. However, The Star-Spangled Banner is written from the perspective of a time in the immediate wake of the struggle for independence. The struggles are all in the past. The anthem celebrates the golden age.

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Bosnia and Herzegovina, as befits a country created artificially as an amalgam of various ethnic groupings, has been unable, to date, to reach consensus on a suitable lyric, and so their anthem is officially wordless. However, the following unofficial lyrics are sometimes sung. You will note that they are carefully uncontroversial. Despite that, even the tune is not universally accepted, with Bosniaks generally liking the national anthem, Croats being ambivalent towards it, and Serbs overwhelmingly disliking it,even booing it at some performances

You’re the light of the soul
Eternal fire’s flame
Mother of ours, o land of Bosnia
I belong to you

The beautiful blue sky
Of Herzegovina
In the heart are your rivers
Your mountains

Proud and glorious
Land of ancestors
You shall live in our hearts
Ever more

Generations of yours
Show up as one
We go into the future
Together!

Which brings us, finally, to an anthem that is, I suspect, unlike any other. I have brought only a few examples here, but many others that I have read in preparing this post tread the same well-worn path: celebrating the bloody foundation, either at the time (as it were) – La Marseillaise – or the day after (as it were) – The Star-Spangled Banner – or declaring the justice of the continuing struggle – La Portuguesa, God Save the King – or celebrating the beauty and greatness of the country – the as yet untitled anthem of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Let us look, now, at the Israeli national anthem.

As long as in the heart, within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And towards the ends of the east,
An eye gazes toward Zion,

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our own land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Consider the following.

Hatikva (The Hope) was written as a poem by Naftali Herz Imber in 1878, 70 years before the state was founded. After he came from Poland to Eretz Yisrael, the poem struck a chord with the pioneers, and, in 1887, Shmuel Cohen sang the poem using a melody he knew from Romania. The song then spread rapidly throughout the Zionist communities of Eretz Yisrael, and was eventually adopted as the anthem of the Zionist movement in 1933.

What makes this anthem unusual is that it reflects neither on the qualities of the country nor on the struggle for independence. In the only verse that has been retained since its adoption as the official anthem of Israel there is no fulfilment, not even any genuine anticipation; there is, instead, hope. The only emotion expressed is hope; the ‘triumph’ is nothing more than the fact that this hope is not yet lost. While it is understandable that, in the uncertainty of the state’s early years, this emotion may have resonated with a population engaged daily with creating a state from nothing, it is, perhaps, a little surprising that this unfulfilled note was not ‘updated’ after the Six-Day War in 1967, when even Zion and Jerusalem were suddenly in our hands.

Listen to the uncertainty in this lyric:
“As long as…” and no longer.
“Our hope is not yet lost”; not yet, but it could be, at any moment.

It strikes me that this is a lyric that has become more resonant, again, since 7 October, when we woke up to the realisation that to be a free people in our own land is still as much an aspiration as a reality. While hostages languish in subterranean dungeons in Gaza, while tens of thousands of citizens in the North have no prospect of returning to their homes, many of which have been damaged by rocket fire, while tens of thousands of reservists face another tour of duty that wrenches them from their families and their livelihoods, talk of being a free nation in our own land seems, once again, as much a dream as a reality.

Hatikvah is an expression of yearning for becoming, not a celebration of being. As such, it seems to me profoundly Jewish, and profoundly diasporic. It is in a minor key (a rarity for a national anthem), cut from the same cloth as the image of the fiddler precariously perched on the roof. (Any excuse to watch that opening monologue.) In the good times, the aspiration expressed in Hatikvah can be inspirational. In the less good times, it can sometimes seem melancholic. Having been profoundly moved by it throughout my life, I still yearn for the day when, with the entire Jewish population returned to Zion, and Israel living at peace and in prosperity with its neighbours and itself, the Knesset will vote unanimously to replace the no-longer-relevant Hatikvah with a new, celebratory, national anthem, in a major key. If that ever happens, I shall miss it terribly. However, rereading the vision of a future Israel that I have just painted, I don’t see Hatikvah becoming outdated any time soon.