Kicking Cancer’s Pain

Photograph by Edward Chu

When Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg was a child growing up in the Bronx, he learned karate to protect himself in his rough-and-tumble New York neighborhood. Now as an adult living in Southfield, Mich., he is using his martial-arts training to teach young people with cancer and other serious illnesses a way to cope with their pain and fears.

Since 1998, when he started Kids Kicking Cancer, in Detroit, Rabbi Goldberg estimates that more than 600 people age 4 to 22 have participated in the martial-arts classes the charity offers at nine hospitals in Michigan and New York City. The charity’s instructors — 22 of whom are paid staff members and 5 who volunteer their time — also visit children in their homes for individual instruction and run a hospice program. Classes teach breathing exercises, which patients later use during chemotherapy and other treatments to help block pain. The young people also learn karate punches and chops, depending on their physical conditions.

“Upon diagnosis, every child feels that they have no control over anything,” says the rabbi, who lost a daughter to leukemia 23 years ago. “They feel they are very weak and they have no power, and that they could die. We put uniforms on these children and convince them they can be powerful and they can be an important part of their healing.”

Children are referred to the free programs by hospital social workers, and patients’ siblings are welcome at the classes to help them cope with their own feelings of frustration and sadness, as well as to lend support to their sick sisters or brothers.

Rabbi Goldberg hopes to double his charity’s $1.4-million budget next year and expand the program to hospitals in California. Eighty-five percent of the organization’s money comes from donations from individuals, and the rest from foundation and corporate grants. In May, Rabbi Goldberg won a $120,000 award for his work from the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Program.

Here, Rabbi Goldberg visits Luke, a 9-year-old with cancer, at his home to work on breathing and meditation exercises.