Hava Nagila / Harry Belafonte

Let's Cheer Up!

Hava Nagila is a Jewish folk song. Generally they sing this song (and dance) when their wedding days, so, it is kind of wedding celebrate song. Nagila Hava mean is  ' Lets Cheer Up' and the song put you’re a better mood.  Melody of song is so familiar to me because in Turkey (as a Muslim country which is generally doesn’t have good feeling about Jewish people) we play same melody when we get married in our wedding celebration ceremony.  So interesting ha ? I mean I believe lots of people who in live Turkey and dance with this song don’t know that they share a custom with Jewish people. I try to came this point people just hate other people without have any information about them. They don’t care about who they are, what they love etc. Governments, countries, or other authorities can do bad things to people, I agree with that but we can’t say that this government has mean political way so whole this people who live that country is mean. No, not this way, at least I don’t believe like that. So we try to figure out them culture, maybe history and see them just independent person without have any bias. At least I see people in this way. 

Nagila Hava Dance

Anyway lets gives some information about song. Ohm Ohm, The melody of Hava Nagila  was taken from a Romanian folk dance-song from Bucovina (a variant of Hora). It uses thePhrygian dominant scale, common in music of Romania. It is perhaps the first modern Israeli folk song in the Hebrew languagethat 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, when Hebrew was being revived for the first time as a spoken language in almost 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.

Yep, and here is song's lyric

Transliteration	Hebrew text		English translation
Hava nagila	הבה נגילה		Let's rejoice
Hava nagila	הבה נגילה		Let's rejoice
Hava nagila ve-nismeḥa	הבה נגילה ונשמחה		Let's rejoice and be happy
	(repeat)
Hava neranenah	הבה נרננה		Let's sing
Hava neranenah	הבה נרננה		Let's sing
Hava neranenah ve-nismeḥa	הבה נרננה ונשמחה		Let's sing and be happy
	(repeat)
Uru, uru aḥim!	!עורו, עורו אחים		Awake, awake, my brothers!
Uru aḥim be-lev sameaḥ	עורו אחים בלב שמח		Awake my brothers with a happy heart
	(repeat line four times)
Uru aḥim, uru aḥim!	!עורו אחים, עורו אחים		Awake, my brothers, awake, my brothers!
Be-lev sameaḥ	בלב שמח		With a happy heart