The phrase gained popular use in 1965 when songwriter Shlomo Carlebach composed the song "Am Yisrael Chai" as the anthem of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) movement. According to The Forward, the slogan ranks second as an anthem of the Jewish people behind only Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel.
History
Early Zionism
A version of "Am Yisrael Chai" featured in early Zionism, appearing as early as 1895 in a songbook.[1] It was set to many different tunes,[1][2] and printed with sheet music in Popular Jewish Melodies (1927).[3] The slogan was also popular in Zionist prose literature.[4][5]
"We are prepared to defend ourselves against the will of Hitler Germany to destroy. We must defend ourselves because we are a people which lives and wishes to live. My last word that I wish to speak to you is this – our people lives — Am Yisrael Chai!"[6]
In the songbook Songs of My People (c.1938), compiled in Chicago, the song "Am Yisrael Chai" appears.[7]
BBC recording from 20 April 1945 of Jewish survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp singing "Hatikvah", followed by the shout of "Am Yisrael chai!", only five days after their liberation by Allied forces.
The First NFTY Leadership Institute in the summer of 1948 was dedicated to the theme, "Am Yisrael Chai -- Israel Lives Again: The Implications of the State of Israel for American Jewish Youth.[13]
Carlebach's "Am Yisrael Chai" (1965)
The phrase gained popular use in 1965, when Jewish songwriter Shlomo Carlebach composed "Am Yisrael Chai" as the solidarity anthem of the Soviet Jewry movement at the request of Jacob Birnbaum, founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ), a United States political organization that promoted the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate to Israel. Carlebach and Birnbaum knew each other, and their respective grandfathers had met at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel. By 1965, Carlebach was already popular for his melodies put to Hebrew prayers, and Birnbaum reached out to him in the hopes of composing a song ahead of a planned major SSSJ rally in front of the Soviet Mission to the United Nations in New York on April 4, 1965.[14]
While in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, Carlebach wrote and first performed "Am Yisrael Chai" before a group of youth in Prague. On April 2, 1965, Carlebach phoned Birnbaum with news that the song was completed. Carlebach publicly performed the song for the first time at the April 4 SSSJ rally. The song became the centerpiece of the SSSJ's annual solidarity rally between 1972 and 1991.[14][15] It is the final song of Soul Doctor, a Broadway musical about Carlebach's life.[16]
The people of Israel live, our Father still lives!
The song's lyrics are derived from Genesis 45:3: "Joseph said to his brothers, 'I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?'" (הַעוֹד אָבִי חַי)[18] Carlebach added the words "Am Yisrael Chai" (the Nation of Israel lives) and, for the song's refrain, changed the words "is my father still alive" to "our father is still alive" (עוֹד אָבִינוּ חַי)[19] in a possible reference to the Jewish tradition that "Jacob/Israel did not die." According to German-American musicologist Tina Frühauf, Carlebach changed the reference from Joseph's father to God "as the father of the children of Israel."[16]
Jewish news organization The Forward placed "Am Yisrael Chai" second only to Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel, as "an anthem of the Jewish people".[14] Judaic scholar Arnold Eisen has called "Am Yisrael Chai" the "civil religion" of American Jewry.[20]
The phrase and Carlebach's song has become a widely used defiant expression and affirmation of Jewish continuity, especially during times of war and heightened antisemitism.[21] Jacob Birnbaum interpreted the song's dominant phrase to signify "a rebirth of Jewish life, including music" in the post-Holocaust world.[14] According to musicologist Tina Frühauf, the song's lyrics evoke a sense of the Jewish nation, Jewish survival, and an affirmation of Jewish identity.[16] Some tour groups visiting Masada shout "Am Yisrael Chai" to invert the emphasis on martyrdom and resistance at the fort; life is the point, according to Professor Theodore Sasson.[22] The phrase is also chanted during the March of the Living, an annual student commemoration of the Holocaust.[23]
On October 17, 2023, in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Hasidic Jewish singer Benny Friedman released a song called "Am Yisrael Chai" to capture the spirit of the Jewish people during the war,[33] and later launched his "Am Yisrael Chai" concert tour in January 2024 to promote Jewish unity and solidarity.[34][35] Israeli singer Eyal Golan released a song also titled "Am Yisrael Chai" on 19 October, in which he sings about the return of the hostages and the solidarity and resilience of the Israeli people.[36] Jewish a cappella groups Maccabeats, Y-Studs, and Six13 released "Avinu SheBashamayim" as a reaction to the attacks, ending with the words "Am Yisrael Chai."[37]
↑ Werner, Alfred (1949). "Review of The Birth of Israel; We the People". Jewish Social Studies. 11 (3): 310. ISSN0021-6704. JSTOR4464834. The arch of Titus bears an ancient inscription, proclaiming the end of the Jewish nation. Visiting Rome, last year, the American journalist, Quentin Reynolds, noticed another, more recent inscription on the same monument. It was, in all likelihood, a Palestinian soldier serving with the Allies who had carved these three Hebrew words into one of the supporting columns: Am Yisrael chai, 'The People of Israel Lives.' This would have been an apt title for the first third of the present book, a splendid job of reporting on Israel's life-and-death struggle in the spring of 1948.
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