As will surprise absolutely no one who knows me, one of my favorite things in the world is reading the articles of the linguistics commentator at the Jewish Daily Forward. Recently there was a kerfuffle over the fact that the one Arab member of the Israeli Supreme Court stood mute during the singing of the National anthem, HaTikva. It turns out that standing mute for this has been acceptable behavior for the 20% of the Israeli citizenry that is not Jewish for quite some time.

Philologos, the above mentioned commentator, delved into the history of HaTikva and discovered that most, if not all, of the problems experienced by non-Jews could be eliminated by a few simple edits, the most important of which simply take the song back to the words of the original poem on which it was based.

As is usual with these wonderful columns, he finds a few other things along the way that may be of interest. To read the column, click this link.