A former Israeli talk show host and prominent philanthropist is attempting to set a new Guinness world record for the most people singing an anthem simultaneously in real time.
Haifa-born Galia Albin, RIGHT, has spent the last seven months financing and
putting together the Hatikvah Project: Live Hatikvah, a non-profit
initiative aimed at uniting world Jewry through a global media event on
the eve of Yom Ha’atzmaut.
At 10:50 p.m. Israel time (3:50 p.m., eastern time) on May 7, Albin expects to capture, through live satellite video feed, nearly 300,000 participants in Israel and worldwide, while they sing the Israeli national anthem as one.
The event will be broadcast on national TV in Israel, and Albin said she’s engaged the services of Israeli media outlets the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz, as well as national cellphone service providers, to remind Israelis to tune in prior to the event.
She said the first image people will see on the broadcast will be Israeli President Shimon Peres, since he’s scheduled to kick-off the anthem from Tel Aviv.
Other feeds will broadcast from Jewish communities in the Diaspora, including one from in front of the United Nations in New York.
There is a Canadian connection to the attempt, as youth on the annual March of the Living – taking place this year from April 28 to May 11 – will also participate in the singing during their tour of Israel, the last leg of their trip.
Eli Rubenstein, Canadian national director for the March, said his organization will have more than 1,000 Canadian students, chaperones and survivors assemble at the Mini Israel theme park in the Ayalon valley near Jerusalem to sing in Live Hatikvah.
They will be joined by March groups from Panama and Australia.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for our students to take part in a historic moment, as well as to identify with the unity of the Jewish people around the world,” he said. “And, after spending a week in Poland, much of it involving the intense studying of the Shoah, this will indeed be a joyful moment of hope for the students.”
Rubinstein added he was told the Canadians will be shown singing on Israel’s Channel 2, on the national broadcast.
Albin noted that the broadcast will only be able to offer each participating community “a fraction of satellite time [during the actual singing], because Hatikvah is only about two minutes long.”
The full Live Hatikvah broadcast will last 90 minutes and cut to different communities, cities and personalities in Israel and abroad in the run-up to the record attempt, Albin said.
In a phone interview with The CJN from Israel, Albin likened the upcoming event to Live Aid – the 1985 multi-venue, concert fundraiser in relief of famine in Ethiopia that launched an era of benefit concerts – and echoed her website’s phrasing that the “global singing of Hatikvah will… create a collage of Jews around world” to promote unity with the state of Israel.
Albin said she started the project last year as a result of rumblings she’d heard about in the Knesset where Arab MKs and others have pressed to update some of Hatikvah’s lyrics to reflect the changing multicultural landscape in the country.
“They want to change the words “nefesh Yehudi homiyah” (a Jewish soul yearns) to “nefesh Yisraeli homiyah” (an Israeli soul yearns),” she said. “There is a trend now in discussion in Israel – that maybe it’s about time after 60 years, that this country will be the country of all its citizens.
“Being a mother of four, I asked my kids if they knew about Hatikvah. And I was shocked that even my own kids, who did get education in Israel, don’t really know what it means to be am chofshi, to be free. ‘Aren’t we free?’ they ask. No, we’re not. Because we still live under the law of war. I believe that if we don’t preserve the Jewish state, it will not exist. [Jews] born and raised in Israel do not understand the miracle of having a Jewish state.”
Hatikvah was not formally adopted as the official anthem of Israel until 2004 when a Knesset vote finally gave it that designation.
One of the reasons for this 56-year delay were concerns voiced by Israel’s Arab communities, who refused to accept the anthem because its core wording refers exclusively to the “Nefesh Yehudi,” and is considered exclusionary by some of the country’s non-Jewish citizenry.
Albin said she hopes to turn Live Hatikvah into a yearly tradition in Israel, and encourages people wishing to add their own Hatikvah information or participate in the record attempt to visit the website (livehatikvah.org).
The website includes a section where readers can post varying Hatikvah versions in video format. Some of the eclectic ones already posted include renditions by Barbra Streisand, an instrumental attempt by thrash metal guitarist Marty Friedman of Megadeath, and a hip-hop version by French group Francky Perez & Broadway.
Beyond that, the website also outlines the detailed Guinness world record rules on how groups who wish to be part of the Hatikvah attempt can officially register and record the singing.
According to Kaoru Ishikawa, records manager at the Guinness World Records’ London headquarters, the category of “Most People Singing a National Anthem Simultaneously” is currently open. However, the Guinness World Record organization has set a minimum bar of 200 people to count toward any new record.
For more information, visit www.livehatikvah.org