I saw a book once about the man who wrote "Hava Nagila." I should have bought the book, but my budget got the better of me.
I had alwasy thought of the song as traditional, but now I'm wondering about authorship. http://www.hebrewsongs.com says the tune is traditional Hassidic, but the lyrics were written by Mosheh Nathanson and transcribed by Abraham Zevi Idelsohn. I checked several sources, but couldn't find definitive information about the origin of this song. Can anybody help?
-Joe Offer-