Origin
The melody was taken from a Ukrainian folk dance-song from Bukovina (a variant of Hora). It uses the Phrygian dominant scale, common in music of Romania and Western Ukraine. The commonly used text was probably composed by Abraham Zevi (Zvi) Idelsohn in 1918 to celebrate the British victory in Palestine during World War I as well as the Balfour Declaration. Psalm 118 (verse 24) of Hebrew Scripture was the original source of Hava Nagila.
Read more about this topic: Hava Nagila
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