Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg is a martial arts black belt.
But what he does with his training is far from the violence made popular by movies, TV and video games.
Instead, he helps children deal with their life threatening diseases.
He has taken the spiritual part of this physical training and turned into a blessing for so many young people, who can take their minds off of their pain or refocus the energy of pain into something fun, disciplined and spiritual,
Rabbi Goldberg was for many years the director of Chai Lifeline’s miraculous Camp Simcha, a camp that year in and year out offers fun to their otherwise ill children.
His Kids Kicking Cancer program constantly offers children a way to feel good about themselves.
“Pain is a message one does not have to accept,” is the central message of Kids Kicking Cancer.
As a result of the annual grant of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, the Pearlstone Kallah has sponsored Rabbi Goldberg 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 2, and 4:30 p.m., Saturday, March 3, at Congregation Tiferes Yisroel on Pinkney Road in Upper Park Heights.
Rabbi Goldberg lost his first child to cancer in 1983, so he as well as anyone, he “gets” this subject all too well.
He is a clinical asst. professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Detroit’s Wayne State University. He teaches pediatric cancer patients to see themselves as capable and important “participants in their own healing” rather than view themselves as victims of disease.
KKC not only strengthens children’s physical well being, it also teaches them to “tap into the inner light of their spiritual self – a focus that generates incredible power, energy and internal strength.”
Rabbi Goldberg’s presentations will be something different. It’s not Israel, it’s not what’s happening locally in politics or development. But for the experiences of many families, pediatric cancer is the sum total of their days.
Please, if you are so inclined, or if you know someone who needs to hear Rabbi Goldberg, please check this one out.
The goal of KKC is to help children with serious disease heal, “while empowering them physically, spiritually and emotionally.”

For the past several years, I’ve watched the websites and the blogs when it comes to sexual molestation within the Jewish community.
I’ve noticed and learned so much.
There are so many who wish to offer counsel from their “expert” perches inside the organizational cage of societal structure.
We don’t hear enough, however from the real experts in the field of sexual abuse…the victims, the survivors.
We don’t hear enough, because so many are so afraid to be stigmatized. So many are so afraid of the results of their courage.
And this is a huge, huge mistake.
Sexual molestation, abuse whatever we call it is like the smoke from a fire. Even though the flames are long ago doused, the stench of the smoke still lingers on in the place of the fire. That’s what abuse does. It haunts its victims. It is there when they make their decisions about friendships, about jobs, about education, about child rearing, about religion.
And there are so many here in the Baltimore Jewish community who have been victimized by this. Some have memories that are decades old, yet like ice figures they are often frozen in place from seeking help or exposing their perpetrators.
We cannot pretend that this toxic problem doesn’t exist among us. We must do what we can to help welcome those victims who quietly suffer to come out of their places of hiding and seek to begin living full lives.
Please don’t make them feel awkward. Give them a place of welcome.
And if they aren’t too enthusiastic about their faith right now, that’s okay. Welcome them anyway. Bring people around through kindness and friendship and trust. Victims and survivors so need to be able to trust again.

So, look I don’t mean to come off like an insensitive jerk here, but if I read one more account of the “heroic” Barbaro, I think I’m going to scream.
Yes, he won the Kentucky Derby and he was a brave horse in his fight to live and after breaking down at the Preakness.
But, my G-d, he was a product of the horse breeding industry, an animal bred to make his owners a profit.
How about these three names? Know who they are? Emi Elmaliah, Michael Ben Sa’adon, Israel Zamolloa.
They were three Israelis whose lives abruptly came to an end last month when a homicidal maniac blew himself and these there innocents up in an Eilat bakery. And yet, while we could probably find that Barbara dined on a hefty diet of special oats and hay, we’d be harder pressed to learn much about these three Israelis, who were working at a bakery when their lives came to an end.
I never heard of the word “laminitis,” but now by reading the area media, I know more than I ever wanted to know.
But have I ever read an article about what happens to a person when they are killed by a combusting bomb. Nope, don’t remember seeing that well designed graphic anywhere.
Still, we don’t have to go far to bring home the point anymore. Notice how cold it is outside?
Couple nights ago, I was driving home through the city after a late night of work. I came to a corner, it was about 10:15 and there was a young man bundled up holding the hand of a toddler, also bundled up. This was no place for baby. He should have been in bed, covered up, nice and warm. Yet, not far from Eutaw Street, he was here out late in the freezing cold?
Annie Mae Anderson?
Know that name?
Probably not.
She died the other night, freezing to death. But she was 81, had dementia and wasn’t wearing a coat when she wandered outside.
You know what the poor of the inner city who fight the cold every day, Annie Mae Anderson and even the three largely unknown victims of terrorism in Israel seem to have in common?
They aren’t Barbaro.
We should care about our fellow man as much as we do about a horse.
But maybe we don’t. And that’s our problem.

My 1984 red Nissan Sentra died on a freezing cold Sunday afternoon in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot next to Colonial Village Shopping Center in Pikesville.

It was late in the afternoon, the sun was already setting, and there I was lifting the hood as if I had the slightest idea of what I might find or fix under there.

This was before cellphones. And I knew that a bunch of children were waiting for their “Munchkin” doughnut holes back in my Randallstown home.
Going through my wallet while still trying to turn the ignition on, the car just wouldn’t turn over. I knew that calling road service would take an hour or two.

A man walked over to my car. It was Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. He had been recently appointed the new spiritual leader of Congregation Shomrei Emunah. He didn’t know me from anyone.

But I knew who he was.

Rabbi Weinreb asked if he could give me a lift home.

When I told him “home” was off of Winands Road in Randallstown, he said “no problem.”

He took me all the way home and wouldn’t accept an offer for gas money.

This is how I officially met Rabbi Weinreb.

Over the years, Rabbi Weinreb was always there for me and for this community. Just knowing he was in town gave the community integrity and grounded it in respect.

Whether I watched him on my computer speak during Tisha B’Av, or I just went to his Cross Country Blvd. home to pick his brain a bit, there was always time.

I missed his presence here when he left to lead the Othodox Union, but it also made feel as if this important international organization was indeed in good hands. Who best to help the OU heal after the wounds left behind by the toxicity of the Rabbi Baruch Lanner situation?

So when I read recently that Rabbi Weinreb’s future as the OU’s leader is coming to a close, it makes me take pause. He is one of the men I can point at to my children and say, “see that man, he is one of the great ones.”

I do not fully understand why the OU made such a decision. But if we don’t want men such as Rabbi Weinreb leading Orthodoxy, who else really is there?

A short while back, I was at Barnes and Noble picking up a book on the Jewish views of heaven. Rabbi Weinreb turned the corner of the bookshelves and came right to the Judaica section. I felt the energy of greatness standing there next to me.

It’s so seldom one gets to experience that.

My husband & I have eaten at the Sunday brunch a few times with my husband’s large family. We were treated well, the food was good & plentyful. We are very satisfied with this restaurant.