In the Israeli imagination, the Mediterranean Sea evokes at once the western frontier, the venue from which one arrives to the Land of Israel, as well as the vital connection to the outside world, tangible or imaginary. For this reason songs about boats, sea travel and ports are also conspicuous in the children’s repertoire in Hebrew.
One example is ‘Song of the Port’ written by the eminent poetess Lea Goldberg to mark the celebration of the opening of the Tel Aviv seaport in 1936. The song, published in Davar le-yeladim (an influential children’s newspaper published by the Labor Party), resounds with optimistic markers of progress and industrial activism: ‘A thousand hands unload and build / we conquer the seashore and the wave / we are building a harbor here!’
