Hava Nagila
Jewish traditional folk song in Hebrew
"Hava Nagila" (Hebrew: הָבָה נָגִילָה, romanized: Hāvā Nāgīlā, lit. 'Let us rejoice') is a Jewish folk song. It is traditionally sung at celebrations, such as weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other Jewish holidays among the Jewish community. Written in 1918, it quickly spread through the Jewish diaspora.
History
The melody is based on a Hassidic Nigun. It was composed in 1918 to celebrate the Balfour Declaration and the British victory over the Ottomans in 1917. It was first performed in a mixed choir concert in Jerusalem.
Abraham Zevi Idelsohn (1882–1938), a professor at Hebrew University, began cataloging all known Jewish music and teaching classes in musical composition. One of his students was a promising cantorial student, Moshe Nathanson, who with the rest of his class was presented by the professor with a slow, melodious, 19th-century chant (niggun or nigun) and assigned to add rhythm and words to fashion a modern Hebrew song. There are competing claims regarding "Hava Nagila"'s composer, with both Idelsohn and Nathanson being suggested.
The niggun has been attributed to the Sadigurer Chasidim, who lived in what is now Ukraine.
“Hava Nagila” enters the record as jewish traditional folk song in Hebrew. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hava, Nagila and Jewish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Hava Nagila” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hava, Nagila and Jewish provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131718. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1917, 1882 and 1938.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Hava Nagila” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.