“I had an easy task—I had to break
[through] the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union. But you had a much more
difficult task—you had to break [through] the Golden Curtain.” The latter
was a reference to the materialism and wealth that many Jews in the West
have to leave behind when moving to Israel.
This is a question that all of us who are involved in helping Jewish people
to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel) have been asked at one time or another.
God remembers
His scattered
people. The shofar will be
sounded at the time of the great
ingathering of the Jewish exiles back
to Israel. Sounding it today is
a reminder to pray for the Jews and
to assist them to return to
their Land.
The anthem's title means "the
hope." It refers to
the hope that the Jewish
people had for nearly
2,000 years that they would
someday return to their
homeland. The anthem declares that the exile has
finally ended and that the dream to
go back to Zion has become a reality.
