Ka’eleh Hazmanim 2020 - 2020 כאלה הזמנים

Song Meaning

The lyrics present a narrator who identifies as 'Zmaniel, the singer of time,' a celestial clerk overseeing eternity. This persona views all of history as a film, a vast archive of events they meticulously copy and record. The tone is one of detached observation, a cosmic bureaucrat acknowledging both grand historical narratives and the small, personal failures that punctuate them. The narrator seems to be a minor functionary, not a divine architect, admitting that even 'small clerks have big failures.' This sense of cosmic bureaucracy and inevitable failure is encapsulated in the recurring refrain, 'Ka'eleh hazmanim' (These are the times). This phrase acts as a shrug of resignation, a justification for both individual and collective shortcomings. The lyrics suggest a cyclical view of history where 'everything passes and returns,' and even 'great nations have small failures.' The narrator's role is to copy old stories, implying a lack of agency or ability to alter the course of events, only to document them. The most striking aspect is the juxtaposition of the eternal, infinite nature of the narrator's role with the mundane reality of their task. They are in 'eternity's offices' but are 'copying an old story' from an 'ancient, ancient file.' This creates a subtle irony: the keeper of time is bound to repetition, and the grand sweep of history is reduced to a bureaucratic process. The narrator admits to occasional moments of doubt, questioning if 'something seems not right' in the current era, the 'twentieth century' (or twenty-first). Ultimately, the lyrics convey a profound sense of fatalism and the futility of effort. The narrator states, 'Don't try in vain, nothing here helps,' as 'all contracts and declarations are buried.' The recurring phrase 'Ka'eleh hazmanim' becomes a mantra for accepting this state of affairs, where even songs cannot alter the predetermined outcomes. The effectiveness lies in this melancholic acceptance, painting a picture of time as an indifferent, repeating cycle where even celestial observers are mere scribes of inevitable, often disappointing, events.