“
Hava Nagila” (
Havah Nagilah, "Let us rejoice") is an
Israeli folk song traditionally sung at Jewish celebrations. It is perhaps the first modern Israeli folk song in the
Hebrew language that has become a staple of band performers at
Jewish weddings and
bar/bat mitzvah celebrations. It was composed in the 1920s in the
British Mandate of Palestine, at a time when Hebrew was first being revived as a spoken language for the first time in 2,000 years (since the
destruction of the
Second Temple in 70 CE). For the first time, Jews were being encouraged to speak Hebrew as a common language, instead of
Yiddish,
Arabic,
Ladino, or other regional Jewish languages.