Jewish mystic’s predictions about 2010 include Kansas

At least one of Naftali Hertz Imber’s predictions for 2010, as recorded in an 1897 Los Angeles Times article headlined “America’s Destiny,” was spot-on: “The Californian wine will be famous all over the world, as the French champagne is at present.”

The part about Kansas seceding from the union and leading a second American civil war that shifts the map of the world? Not likely to be borne out, says Naftali Imber’s descendent who lives in Kansas, attorney Steve Imber.

A peripatetic poet, mystic and alcoholic, Naftali Hertz Imber is best known today as the author of the words to Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” (See below)

But by the late 19th century, he was traipsing around the Golden State, calling himself the “Apostle of the Kabbalah and Emissary of the 37 masters” and writing articles in the LA Times as “Prof. Naphtali Herz Imber” when he wasn’t making its news columns for being drunk and disorderly.

Imber was the subject of an Oct. 15 story in Tablet magazine by Rutgers University Yiddish scholar Eddie Portnoy, who brought Imber’s 1897 predictions back to light.

Apocalypse now?
“In the year 2010, America will face a great period of hard times, which will give birth to important events, giving history another direction and changing the map of all the countries on the face of the globe,” Imber wrote in 1897.

Hard times, check. And the next part, about the advent of solar power, seems prescient, too, if a bit overstated. (It will “supply the force to drive the locomotives and vehicles of all descriptions …”)

But the ensuing section, about Kansas, seems, well, far-fetched.

“In the year above mentioned, an election for Governor will take place in Kansas State,” Naftali Imber wrote. “The campaign will be a hot one, and all the eyes of the Union will be directed to the development of the struggle in that State, which will be regarded as the most radical and progressive of the United States. A powerful Governor will be elected, who will be an exact type of the State itself; every inch a progressive radical. The shibboleth of the Kansas Legislature will be; ‘The West for Westerners,’ and in a fit of patriotic and progressive excitement the Kansas State will secede from the Union. Missouri and Illinois will follow suit directly afterward, and at a convention of all the Governors of the Western States, which will be held in Chicago, they will declare themselves disunited from the Union.

“The most disastrous war that the world has ever seen will ensue. Over 4,000,000 soldiers will be arrayed against one another in the open field.”

Imber goes on to predict that the South will ally itself with the West, and together they will defeat the East. Later on, he writes, the East, or Atlantic Empire, will go to war with Canada, while the Western Empire will go to war with Mexico.

The writer Portnoy couldn’t resist this quip in his Tablet article:

“Farfetched as Imber’s prophecy seems, its major question right now seems to be how quickly Kansas can become ultra-liberal.”

Touche, Professor Portnoy.

Imber in America
When he read the portion of Portnoy’s article dealing with Kansas, Steve Imber, a member of Congregation Beth Torah and resident of Overland Park, pointed out something about the era during which his great-great-great uncle wrote the LA Times article.

“This was Bleeding Kansas, the home of abolitionists and John Brown, and we know what he did,” said Steve Imber.

Steve Imber said he didn’t have a lot of information about his famous forebear, other than that he wrote “Hatikvah.”

“I knew he did a lot of traveling,” Steve Imber said. “I was told he was an alcoholic. I knew he traveled throughout the Mideast, and I am familiar that he wrote ‘Hatikvah,’ ‘The Hope.’ I think he also believed in the Zionist movement.”

Steve Imber said he heard these tales of Naftali Imber from his late grandfather, New Yorker Harry Imber.

“My grandfather met him (Naftali Imber),” Steve Imber said. “Obviously, my family is proud that he wrote the national anthem of Israel.”

According to Portnoy and other sources, Naftali Herz Imber was born in 1856 in Zlotzshev, Poland, and was a brilliant Talmudic and kabbalistic prodigy. He also dabbled in poetry. In the late 1800s, he traveled across Europe and sojourned in Palestine and India before moving to the United States. It was during his Euro-Asian period that he wrote “Tikvatenu,” the poem that would become the basis for the song “Hatikvah.” It was included in his first book of poetry.

According to Portnoy, Imber’s “American sojourn was marked by itinerancy and an increasing obsession with the occult.” He eventually moved to New York, where he died in 1909 at age 54.


The story of a song
The lyrics of Hatikvah were taken from the first verse and chorus from Naftali Herz Imber’s 1878 poem “Tikvatenu” (Our Hope), which had nine stanzas. (Ed. Note: Another source dates the poem as 1877, and yet another dates it as 1886)

Various sources agree that “Hatikvah” was sung at some of the initial Zionist Congress meetings in 19th-century Europe and that it quickly became the movement’s unofficial anthem. According to notes in a special section of its Web site devoted to “Hatikvah” and Israel’s 60th anniversary, the Jewish Agency for Israel states this was officially confirmed at the 18th Zionist Congress in 1933. It became Israel’s national anthem by acclamation in 1948.

Over the years, Imber’s lyrics have undergone a few changes.

The musical arrangement is credited to Shmuel Cohen in 1888, although many sources say it is probably based on a Romanian folk song he heard during his childhood in Romania, “Carul cu boi.” (“The Ox Driven Cart”)

Hebrew lyrics to ‘Hatikvah’
Kol od balevav penimah
Nefesh yehudi homiyah,
Ulfaatei mizrach kadimah
Ayin lezion zofiyah.
Od lo avdah tikvatenu
Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim,
Lehiyot am chofshi bearzeinu,
Erez zion viyerushalayim.
Lehiyot am chofshi bearzeinu,
Erez zion viyerushalayim.

English translation of lyrics to ‘Hatikvah’
As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And towards the East
An eye looks to Zion,
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

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