Went down to the ocean just the other day
Listened for what the sea and sky had to say
The breeze was a caress and the sun was in my eyes
The summer temperature was beginning to rise
The storm from the day before was just a memory
The lashing rain and thunder were by then history
And then out of nowhere came the word
With a force so undeniable—this is what I heard:
This is the time
The time of the season
This is the time
The season for completion
This is the time
The completion of the overdue
This is the time
It’s overdue but you’ll see it through
Cruising through the atmosphere way above the clouds
Far from the rat race and the madding city crowds
The earth far below me, above me just space
Held aloft by physics and a dose of divine grace
The biggest spiritual magnet pulling me to the east
Not by might, not by power, not by the politics of false peace
But rather by a force much greater than us all
And all around me on that flight I heard its voice call
This is the time
The time for new horizons
This is the time
Bear is bull and bull is bison
This is the time
The present, not the future
This is the time
The time to silence the accuser
Walked through the Old City just the other night
Heard that voice calling, Do you see the light?!
The rising of the truth comes like the morning star
All the false prophets will be shown for what they are
Don’t let the lies and propaganda wear you down
Your blinded brothers and sisters will eventually come around
Your mind has been poisoned living in exile for so long
Your resolve has been weakened, now it’s time to be strong
This is the time
For salvation and redemption
This is the time
No exception or exemption
This is the time
For returning to the land now
This is the time
The world is in your hands now
This is the time
The time for fulfillment
This is the time
The potential is so brilliant
This is the time
For many centuries you wished it
This is the time
Now it’s yours, don’t you miss it
©2017 The Hesh Inc.
The genesis of this song was in 1982 or thereabouts, when I had just transferred to a new yeshiva high school in Jerusalem from the dump I had previously attended in Rehovot. There was a lot of optimism in my life—I was away from home for the first time, I was flexing my creative and self-expressive muscle for the first time, I was meeting new friends—it was generally a very good time for me.
Being in yeshiva in Jerusalem was a singular experience. I felt myself closer to the beating heart of Judaism and the Jewish people, and its force could not be denied. Add to that all the religious-Zionist messianic fervor I was getting in school and in my neighborhood (Kiryat Moshe, home to two of the main bastions of religious Zionism—Mercaz Harav and Machon Meir), and it was easy to feel like the long awaited Redemption could happen at any moment.
One of my new friends was drummer and fellow Blues Brothers enthusiast Izzy Kieffer, who would turn out to be one of my best and most lasting friends and musical partners. Not long after we met, once the school year began in earnest, we set about the business of forming our first band and coming up with material for it. The original kernel of the idea for this song began then, as a sort of funk/r&b riff with humorous lyrics about one of the local characters we had met in town turning out to be none other than the Messiah. We never quite finished the song, so we never performed it.
(It might be worth mentioning that the song title has nothing to do with Billy Joel's song of the same name, which was released four years after Izzy and I wrote ours. Izzy probably got the title from an Israeli television show of the era, Zeh HaZman, which means "this is the time.")
Fast forward now to the era immediately following 9-11, with the situation in the world and especially in Israel very much on my mind. I finally took it upon myself to finish the song, but in a different direction than it had originally been envisioned. The r&b/funk thing was pared down to a more straightforward rock thing, and rather than the humorous scenario in the original lyric idea, this was a positive exhortation to my people to seize the moment and do what we can to bring the Redemption.
"This Is the Time" was the first song committed to digital when I began laying down tracks for my album Soul in Exile 2: Jersey Shore Baby in 2002, with Yonah Lloyd on guitar, Steve Lopresto on bass, and Chimene Petitt, Wendy Horn, and Christine Ghilino (of my late-1990s band, Polyester) on backing vocals. A few more tweakings of the lyric (not shown above) made it a little more universal, appealing not strictly to my tribe but to all good-hearted people of a spiritual bent who want to see the world repaired, and that became the version that was released on the album.
However, the version with the original lyrics was recorded too, and it appears here.
May we see the final redemption soon, whether in Jerusalem or in Asbury Park, and throughout the whole world.