Dancing in the age of fear

Pastor Eric J. Kregel

During the transition of moving the Jews from the government run ghettos into concentration camps, the Nazis gathered a large number of elderly Rabbis to be killed in the streets.

Dressed in their Hasidic garb and wearing prayer shawls, those in charge wanted to make it perfectly clear whom was the target and that anything Jewish-faith, culture, or otherwise- would be stamped out.

The commanding Storm-trooper set fire to a stack of Holy books before the old men.

“Sing Jews,” he ordered. “Sing a Hasidic Ditty!”

He ordered a nearby Nazi band to play a slow, sad dirge.

“Attack them,” he ordered his troops. “Force them against the wall!”

He pointed to the huddle of old men.

“Sing, you dirty Jews, or you will die!”

A sad voice cried out from the group.

“Let us be reconciled, Heavenly Father,” the man said. The Nazis looked around, unable to locate the speaker.

“Let us be reconciled.”

And then the voice sang. The song was to the tune of the dirge, but it was different. The tempo was faster, the melody different. Later, it would have been concluded that the dirge’s origins were not German, but lifted from a Yiddish folk song and the Rabbi knew the original words.

He sang in Hebrew.

“We shall outlive them, Heavenly Father. We shall outlive them.”

As the song swelled and he sang loud, he danced. Locking his arms with the men near him, his feet stomped and others joined him in the singing of this familiar song.

As air is to our bodies, dancing was to those Rabbis. Many of the older men, in fact, boasted that as they grew in age, they grew in dancing skills. Lifting their hands to Jehovah, flinging their feet and legs wildly to the left and right, the Nazi officers could not believe their eyes: in these people’s last moments, they turned their bodies into instruments of praise to their God.

The officer gave the orders to fire. A moment followed of a pause, a hesitation. The young men behind their rifles sensed a power in their praise, in their dance that was greater than the Third Reich, their leaders, or the routine of daily firing squads.

The officer shouted his orders again and they did not listen, watching the old men dance before them.

Finally, the officer pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the young soldiers, ordering them to carry out his orders. Fearfully, the young men did as they were told and pulled the triggers.

What’s so remarkable about this story?

It’s a story about courage in the face of fear. Those giving the orders intended fear to be rooted in those they were subjugating and, if everything went to plan, those old and frail would have quaked before the firing squad.

They didn’t.

Instead, they danced before God without fear and with an abandon toward all those forces around them who wanted them to be scared, helpless, and subdued. Those ordered their death for the purpose of invoking terror in the ghettos failed and, even though they were murdered, their legacy of audacity lingers today.

We live in an age of fear. From watching our news telling us all of the things/people threatening our lives to friends over coffee admitting they are “stressed out” over their life to the growing number of door locks, home security systems, and personal weapons ... we live, sleep, and eat fear.

So what was those Rabbis’ secret in the face of fear? In 1 Peter 3:14-15, the author writes, “Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.”

The work ‘sanctify’ is the key verb in this passage. When we sanctify our hearts, we are entering the process in which God becomes Lord and we resemble His character.

Although the Rabbis, sadly, lacked the intimate, personal friendship found in Jesus Christ required for this kind of sanctification, their praise to God models the kind of wild, bold pursuit those need if they wish to sanctify the Lord God in their hearts.

In this age of fear, where is your worship of God? Do you ignore Him and still find that fear lingers, grows, and subjugates you?

Or do you lift your hands in fearless praise to Him, seeing those who demand fear quickly diminish as your attention upon Jesus Christ ever increases?