I’ve been going to the country’s largest free folk festival in Lowell, Massachusetts now for 25 years or so. It has never failed to entertain me and my wife. We danced in the rain one time to the Texas Playboys playing “You’re Faded Love”. Like Waylon Jennings sang; Bob Wills is still the king.

In more recent years the directors of the festival have entertained the throngs by having a Jewish klezmer band on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The crowd we go with makes it a point to catch the klezmer act. This year they had Alicia Svigals’ Klezmer Fiddle Express come in from The Big Apple. When it came time for the show we all hustled over to where the monument dedicated to those women textile laborers stands, who two centuries ago gave up so much of their health and youth to the exploitation of the mill owners, to sit down on our blankets as close to the stage as possible.

Joanne, myself and the entourage we were with expected to be entertained and even touched by the curious mix of pathos and joy that the audience can receive from this unique modern form, styled from the ancient musical roots of God’s chosen people. It probably is close to something that was heard in the tabernacle of praise that David had instituted as a kind of Store 24 where the music went on 24/7, where it was loud, soft, heartfelt, prayerful, testimonial, ballad-like, raucous, dancing, original songs. The only thing David demanded of his musicians and singers was that they praised God always; they praised him for judgment, for his love, defeating their enemies, for correcting their sins, for enlarging their souls, so they could sing to their God in heaven. They were never embarrassed to sing the truth, those big band leaders; they were not there to please the audience or to make money, but to give praise to the one whose name was too great to speak.

Klezmer music is something like that, it seems to us. When Alicia Svigals’ Klezmer Fiddle Express took the stage I had not interviewed her or spoken to her or any of her band members. I only expected God’s Son would have, as they say, our heart’s touched.

I expected to be moved, but two numbers into the set something unexpected happened, something that impressed my heart beyond the music. A middle-aged man brought a handkerchief to the middle of the crowd and began dancing among the crowd in that distinctive Jewish style, handkerchief in hand, lifting up one leg, placing it down in time and lifting up the other, weaving gracefully, with soft balance, almost like a tightrope walker to the excited music, inspiring the crowd to join in behind him, in what was clearly a wedding line style.

It inspired a passion in me, the music and the dance, I was witnessing an expression of God’s love toward His Jewish children. As I recall I do not know if he was wearing a hat or not, but I do remember his face, joyous but somber, assured, his eyes looking forward, his body tempo and movement in half-time to the driving klezmer beat in perfect subjection to the will of the praise of the driving music. Then one by one, a person here and one there joined in line hand-in-hand behind him.  I watched, gladly and silently, knowing only that I was seeing something spiritual.

He led the growing circle of mixed races and different ages, Alicia Svigal played her fiddle and sang the words she had penned and the people, sitting, standing, dancing under the shadow of the statue of the oppressed women of the sweatshops of centuries gone by celebrated in that moment with some Jewish people on the other side of the world from their homeland. For me, that was something – something to have experienced. And I was happy in my soul.

I thought; “Here in this bastion of the Industrial Revolution where exploitation of children and young women for turning a buck was established as a righteous institution. Against that backdrop, the most persecuted people of the world danced to the music of their God. They danced with races and creeds of other people apparently unaware of anything except the joy of the moment. In a strange place, among the oppressed people, Latino, White, Black and Jew danced together in – well – what they did not quite know what. They danced because the music and dancers caught them up in the moment. The Jewish klezmers played on, the dancing kept on and Alicia called out: “Dance on: we are all God’s children.” My heart stopped.My heart had been silently airy and glad in that moment – Jews dancing so far from home, still in exile from Jerusalem. Dancing with people that had not, could not, share their inescapable fate and that slogan they spoke of solemnly once a year for two thousand years. “Next year in Jerusalem”.

I knew it was not true. We are not all the children of God, not in the way people mean it today, we are not. Even though it is considered politically and religiously correct – It is not true.

Most people are spawned by their own desires, they become the children of either their own making, or some bogus belief about God, whether by their own contrivance or by the oppression of a parent or education in the world or some false religion. It is universally known that there are many gods vying with one another on earth for power over the thoughts and hopes of people everywhere. They vie for not only power over governments and empires but to give spiritual birth to humans that they will become their children.

As the people danced I thought I was hearing in the music the lost chord. When the call, “We are all God’s children!” was made from the stage I heard a sour chord. We are not all God’s children, we don’t all act like God’s friend let alone one of his loving obedient children. To say anything else is to put words in God’s mouth. To dictate to God who and what his children are is nothing short of arrogance and irreligion.

I wondered if I should tell her. I was so taken by her music and the dancing and the dancing to the God of the Jews by a mixed multitude of Christian origins, the ones from lands and heritages that had persecuted them over a multitude of centuries for better than two millennia. I wondered, I hoped maybe I could give her a heads-up that the world will once again, for the last time turn on the Jews; that there is one last great holocaust of the Hebrew nation of Israel yet to be. I wanted to tell her so she and her musicians and the dancer and perhaps her family might understand, might somehow escape what is to befall Israel one last time.

I asked the Lord if I could, if I should, give her a heads-up. I did not hear right then from him. Nor did I have to hear right then. For I have learned to proceed and let the Lord open and shut doors. I requested that if He wanted me to, if he allowed me to, then let it happen Lord. Make it clear to me. Let her come across my path, let her make the first move.

As the people I was with folded up their chairs and picked up their blankets I strolled away from the park and crossed past the stage. As I went by the stage door Alicia came out and we met face to face. I admit I gave that possibility every chance of taking place. I am not ashamed to say it is what I wanted and I was hoping that God would grant my prayer to inform this person who had so edified me of the danger that she and her loved ones were likely going to have to endure. That they would not be found on the contrary side of God’s love and truth. That they would be found to be his children in truth and indeed, taking nothing for granted. After all, that is the reason for the sorrow of her people through the ages. They had not acted in heart or deed as obedient and loving children. God could not, would not, account them as anything other than what they actually were and are.

So she stood in front of me and smiled at me politely, probably expecting me to say some innocuous thing that would be blown to oblivion with the first wisp of wind. But I simply told her, “It has to happen one more time.”

For a moment she was taken back. She said, “I’m sorry, what do you mean.“ I informed her only – “I’m sorry, but it has to happen one more time.”

“Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the LORD.
  For thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant.
  Nevertheless, I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.
  Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger: and I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant.
  And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.
  That thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord GOD.”   Ezek. 16:58-63