We Will Dance Again
The Fellowship | February 24, 2025
Our media partner Alice Lobo visited Israel with The Fellowship in December and is sharing her reflections about the experience. She is the Executive Producer of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a nationally syndicated radio show that airs weekdays from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET on nearly 500 stations in the United States.
In my early twenties, I loved going to music festivals, alternative nightclubs, and raves. Lollapalooza was one of my favorite outdoor events of the summer. I’d go with a bunch of friends and dance under the stars, our disco ball in the sky. That was in Massachusetts, my home state.
A decade later I’d still be dancing, but all over the world. Different countries, cultures, and languages, under that same disco ball in the sky. Greece, France, Brazil, Italy, Amsterdam, Iceland… no matter where I travelled, music was the connecting language I could speak with anyone. Bonding over beats. Strangers became friends, even if just for a night.
My music memories are like an olfactory nerve for the ears – the first few chords of a track awaken the senses and bring me back. Remembering the DJ compilation that got us all high without any drugs. A group gathered, breaking beats like breaking bread and sharing an abundance of joy. Smiling, laughing, dancing, and loving, so much loving. Music does that and the best DJs were symphony conductors leading us, like individual instruments, to a beautiful crescendo.
I think of this as I walk through the Nova festival site in southern Israel in December of 2024. Hundreds of photographs memorialize the nearly 400 people slaughtered there on October 7, 2023, most of them young music lovers embracing a community I knew all too well. I think of this as I look into the pained eyes of a father, not much older than myself, whose son, age 20 (now 22), was kidnapped from the festival.
Bringing People Together
His son, an aspiring DJ, loved music and bringing people together. In music festival culture, DJs are leaders, with popular ones drawing a following from all over the globe. An incredible DJ has instincts like a jaguar, creating a set list that revolves around an acute awareness of the environment, building anticipation, and knowing just the right moment to lunge into a sprint — an intensity the crowd waits for and celebrates. As the father spoke, I imagined his son at the festival overcome by the music and in his happy place, and how, twenty years earlier, I could have been there too.
The faces on the memorials, their stories, reminded me of so many young people I’d met at festivals along the way. They were from everywhere, drawn by the pull of community, to collectively experience the elation that brings music and art lovers together, much like sporting events do, except they were all on the same team.
After leaving the Nova festival site, we continued to another memorial, a lot that contained a wall of destroyed cars, hundreds of them, some burnt beyond recognition, others riddled with bullets – symbols of those that did not escape. Permanently parked next to an Israeli flag, a bombed-out car, the centerpiece of the memorial, is decorated with the national flower of Israel, the Calanit.
Our hosts tell us the bright red flower, which represents strength and resilience, bloomed the following spring despite the ashes at the Nova festival site and along the border with Gaza. Hearing that reminded me of the ashes and aftermath in New York City following 9/11, and the persistence of nature in the cycle of life – no matter what horrors mankind puts in her way.
Healing From Trauma
After leaving both memorials we stopped at a facility (Sdot Negev) dedicated to helping families, particularly children, traumatized by war. The counselors at these “Resilience Centers” explained how their services had been overwhelmed following October 7, and how they need to expand. They described children afraid of coming to the U.S., believing they were hated. Children.
The counselors gave us a stuffed animal they used during therapy sessions, a dog with long arms that wrapped around you like a hug. I ended up with it wrapped around me on the drive back to Jerusalem, not realizing I needed comfort too as so many thoughts and emotions flooded my mind. I was haunted by what I experienced at the Nova festival site – walking through it, hearing explosions in the distance, and thinking about that father and his anguish.
In Tel Aviv, where we visited him during a weekly rally in Hostage Square for families and supporters, they gave us dog tags that said in Hebrew and English: “Bring Them Home Now.” They also gave us wristbands from the Nova festival, the kind you wear when you go to those events. I wore so many in my youth and never imagined I’d be wearing one again in my fifties, but for such a different reason – as a gesture of solidarity.
A Tearful Reunion
I was in Israel with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for a week traveling the country to bring awareness not only about what happened on October 7, but what continues to happen globally with the rise of anti-Semitism and the dangerous repercussions it has in the world.
Someone warned me upon returning to the States that maybe I shouldn’t wear the wristband or dog tags, that perhaps I shouldn’t draw attention to them for my own safety. That cautionary advice made me understand that I absolutely needed to wear them, write about them, and talk about what I experienced, from my own perspective.
Yesterday morning I woke up to the news I’d been praying for since returning from Israel. Omer Shem Tov, the son of Malki, the father we met, was released after 505 days in terrorist captivity. Tears streamed down my face as I watched Omer reunite with his mom and dad. I’m brought back to the Nova site and a recurring message I saw written everywhere.
“We will dance again.”
I hope Omer will DJ again — and that the music will heal us all.
