If I Forget Thee (Tsiyon tamati)

1887

About This Entry

This song became immediately popular in Ḥibat Tsiyon circles in Eastern Europe and among First Aliyah settlers in Palestine/the Land of Israel. Over the years, the text was modified and the music, originally composed by Tsvi Hirsh Klayner (1864–1948/9), a farmer in Rehovot, was replaced by a popular melody from Hyman Cohen (d. 1918), a music teacher in Philadelphia. The song, more popularly recognized in Hebrew as “Im eshkaḥekh” (If I Forget Thee), is considered a classic “Old Erets Israel” hit, adapted many times in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Zion my innocent one, Zion my desired,

To thee my soul yearns from far away;

May I forget my right hand should I forget thee, my beauty,

Until my grave is sealed upon me . . .

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth until my death

If I do not remember Thee, Zion’s desolated daughter;

May my heart dry up from sickness and poverty

If my fresh tears dry up over your ruin . . .

May my earthen home be demolished, and my soul be shamed,

If the sight of your ruins is removed from my eyes;

May my throat become rotten, ravaged by moths and larvae,

If my voice is not raised to mourn your torment . . .

I shall not forget Thee Zion, my innocent one!

Thou remembering my hope and my misery,

And when I forget all, Thou are the remains of my soul

And Zion, Thou a marker, shall be upon my grave . . .¹

Translated by Karen Alkalay-Gut.

Notes

[“Marker” (tsiyun) is a play on Zion (Tsiyon). This final stanza was modified in 1895 by Dolitzki.—Eds.]

Credits

Menachem Mendl Dolitzki, “Im eshkaḥekh (Tsiyon tamati)” [If I Forget Thee], Keneset yisrael: Sefer klali le-torah ve-li-te‘udah, vol. 3 (Warsaw: 1888), pp. 400–401.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.