STLT#146, Soon the Day Will Arrive

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I was hoping Jacqui James would bail me out today.

I was really hoping there would be some long explanation of the origins of this song – that the lyricist, Ehud Manor, had written this in response to a particular moment/tragedy/event that I could expand upon, or that the composer, Nurit Hirsch, had discovered an ancient melody that he modernized in a unique way.  Something. ANYTHING to capture my interest as we come to the close of this seemingly endless section In Time To Come.

But no, in Between the Lines, James has written simply this:

Well hell.

Okay, so there’s no there there. It’s just another song expressing belief in a better tomorrow. In case we didn’t have enough of those already in the hymnal.

Now be clear: I like this one. I am fond of whatever quality it is that makes Jewish music distinctive, despite being not at all Jewish. It’s easy to sing, it’s got better than decent lyrics, and it’s going to be with me all day because of its prime ear worm qualities. I have used it and will used it. I just don’t have anything else to say about it. It’s a song. A good, decent, hopeful song.

Soon the day will arrive when we will be together,
and no longer will we live in fear.
And the children will smile without wondering whether
on that day thunderclouds will appear.

(Chorus)
Wait and see, wait and see what a world there can be
if we share, if we care, you and me.
Wait and see, wait and see what a world there can be
if we share, if we care, you and me.

Some have dreamed, some have died to make a bright tomorrow,
and our vision remains in our hearts.
Now the torch must be passed with new hope, not in sorrow,
and a promise to make a new start.

(Chorus)

I guess Freud was right. Sometimes a song is just a song.

—

(And sometimes a sunrise behind a tree is just a picture to use because no other images come to mind.)

5 Comments

  1. There is a third verse. I cannot recall how I found it:

    And the vines, they will grow,
    And the tender leaves will blossom,
    And the fruit of our hands will be sweet.
    And the winds that bring change,
    Will clear away the ashes,
    And all brothers will go forth to meet.

    Sounds vaguely biblical. Like Trees of the Field, which has words from Isaiah 55:

    You shall go out with joy
    And be let forth with peace,
    And the mountains and the hills
    Will break forth before you.
    There’ll be shouts of joy
    And the trees of the fields
    Will clap, will clap their hands.

    I think both of these are horas.

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  2. I actually had a different reaction to this song. I think there’s two kinds of hope: the hope that’s based on facts; some tangible evidence that things will get better; the “heady” type of hope, if you will. And then there’s the hope that is just a feeling, an intuition, I guess you might call it a “spiritual” hope – the belief that people will, and in fact, are already in small degrees, moving toward goodness, humanity, compassion, love, what I believe is our natural state. I dunno, call me a cockeyed optimist. Or maybe the sun, the clouds and the trees are hitting me in a certain way today. Check in with me tomorrow 🙂

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  3. This is one of my all-time favourites. I direct an elementary school children’s choir (as well as directing the choir at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver) and have taught them this song many times, using a Hebrew arrangement by Leck. We sing it in Hebrew, then the two verses from our hymnal, then again in Hebrew. I would often program it for the school’s Remembrance Assembly and there would not be a dry eye among the adults by the end.

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  4. Seems from different translations of the lyrics that this is likely a song for the Jewish High Holy Days, alluding as they do to a year and days and the hope that those days will be blest.

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