Educational Media Reviews Online

This captivating and humorous documentary tells the history of the ubiquitously quintessential Jewish song, ”Hava Nagila.” Hava Nagila is Hebrew for “Let us rejoice.” It’s the song that’s played at every Jewish wedding or bar/bat mitzvah, the one that signals everyone to get up and do the hora dance—the dance where you link up arm in arm and kick up your feet—the dance during which family members carry the celebrant, the bride, and the groom, in a chair and dance around the room.

Grossman has interviewed many scholars on the origins and importance of the song and how it danced its way into the zeitgeist. Historical footage portrays parties at which “Hava Nagila” was sung. A wordless melody originating from Bucovina in Ukraine, research suggests that the lyrics, inspired by Psalm 118 (verse 24) of the Hebrew Bible, were composed by Abraham Zevi (Zvi) Idelsohn in 1918 to celebrate the British victory in Palestine during World War I. The song was popularized after World War II—Harry Belafonte talks emotionally about its political importance and singing it in Germany after the war—and became associated with Jewish assimilationism and trajectory from the poverty of the Eastern European shtetls into the burgeoning suburban middle and upper class.

The song has been covered by many. In 1961, Bob Dylan, a Jew, sang his own version—"Talkin' Hava Nageilah Blues"—in a Greenwich Village club. The comedian and parodist Allan Sherman wrote and performed his version, "Harvey and Sheila." . Elvis Presley sang it, and Glen Campbell played it before he got famous. Regina Spektor in 2008 recorded it as the outro or coda of her song "The Flowers." And Santiago Alvarez, an experimental Cuban filmmaker, in his 1965 newsreel collage of black civil rights struggles that is considered a classic of Cuban cinema, had Lena Horne singing her lyrics "Now," to the tune of "Hava Nagila":

Now, now,
Now, now, now, now, now
Now
Now, now, now, now, now,
The message of this song’s not subtle
No discussion, no rebuttal
We want more than just a promise
Say goodbye to Uncle Thomas
Call me naïve
Still I believe
We’re created free and equal.

Some feel the song has become a kitschy cliché of old world tradition, but for many it resonates as an inspiring, anthemic ritual, a timeless and universal song of joy and jubilation: “Let us rejoice, let us rejoice / Let us rejoice and be glad.” See Hava Nagila: The Movie, and you will rejoice and be glad for the fun you had watching this beautifully edited and narrated documentary.