בת ציון | Bat tsiyon | Daughter of Zion (1912)
Artist: Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882-1938)
Lyrics: Mendel Dolitsky (1856-1931)
Tune: Sephardic Melody
This song was written by Menahem Mendel Dolitsky (1856-1931) in 1876. Of the original fifteen verses, Idelsohn included only three in Sefer Ha-Shirim.
“Bat tsiyon” deals with the love of Zion, or the daughter of Zion: Zion and Jerusalem stand for the beloved woman, and the Jewish people are the lovers, who long for Zion.
The melody, which Idelsohn designated as "Sephardic" in the Table of Contents to Sefer HaShirim, is in fact an Ottoman patriotic song Ey vatan, ey ummi musfik [Oh My Homeland, Oh My Beloved], composed in 1876 by Rifat Bey for Ottoman Constitution Day.
This melody, which was adopted by many Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, was adapted to Hebrew and Ladino texts. It is sung to the koplas, a Jewish para-liturgical song in Ladino, "El dia de alha" [The Day of God] for the end of Shabbat, to the piyyut "Adon Olam" [The Lord of the World] (which Idelsohn published later in his Thesaurus, vol. 4, no. 57) and as "Odkha Ki Anitani" [I Will Praise Thee, for Thou Has Heard Me], a psalm sung on various occasions. The melody is also performed with secular texts in Ladino, such as the Romance "El Villano Vil "[The Wicked Farmer] and "La Venganza de la Novia Abandonada"[The Vengeance of the Abandoned Bride]
The many texts adapted to the melody indicate its popularity among Sephardic Jews at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. The melody is in a minor key.
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