Avi gordon: thank you for the correction! I doubly checked and you are right! I knew that they had changed “hatikvah hanoshana” to “hatikvah bat shnat alpaim” but did not realize the other change! BTW- that re-inforces my argument that it was a poem to return and settle the land rather than establishing an independent state. Most people do not realize that the national anthem is only the first two stanzas of his work and it is only part of a much longer poem. If you read the rest of the poem, one is struck by the deep jewish feeling about our losses in eretz yisroel. Imber was secular but he obviously was steeped in jewish tradition and had deep feeling for the indignities of the golus. Lastly, Rav Kook also wrote a marvelous pom but it did not become the national anthem.
I think that even today, some religious zionist roshei yeshiva sang “lijot am kodesh’. If I am not mistaken, Rav Dovid Lipshitz zz’l, Suvalker rov and Rosh Yeshiva of Y.U. after R”Joshe Ber zz’l , sang it that way. You can check with some of his talmidim.