"Hatikvah" (Hebrew: הַתִּקְוָה‎, pronounced [hatikˈva], lit. English: "The Hope") is a 19th-century Jewish poem and the national anthem of Israel. The theme of the romantic composition reflects the Jews' 2,000-year-old hope of returning to the Land of Israel and reclaiming it as a free and sovereign nation. Its lyrics are adapted from a poem by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Złoczów (today Zolochiv, Ukraine), which was then in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria under Austrian rule. Imber wrote the first version of the poem in 1877, while he was a guest of a Jewish scholar in Iași, Romania.