During the 2012 Channukah season, one of the speakers at Rabbi Galperin's community menorah lighting was the founder of Kids Kicking Cancer. I just came across an article in the Jewish Tribune about Rabbi Goldberg being a finalist for CNN's hero of the year. I am reproducing the article here.
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Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg started Kids Kicking Cancer and has been chosen as one of 10 finalists in this year’s CNN Hero of 2014.
One day, Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg came upon a child screaming in hospital during a chemotherapy session and spontaneously stepped in to try to help. Extemporizing, Rabbi Goldberg, a black belt in karate, taught the five-year-old a basic tai chi breathing technique, calming him so that the nurses could begin chemotherapy.
“I told him that the pain is a message you don’t have to listen to and I showed him how to breathe in this amazing energy and blow out the pain…and that is how Kids Kicking Cancer (KKC) was born,” Goldberg told VosIzNeias.com.
Goldberg, rabbi emeritus at Young Israel of Southfield, was head counsellor of Camp Simcha at the time, and sadly, would himself lose a daughter to leukemia.
The non-profit’s website says their mission is “to ease the pain of very sick children while empowering them to heal physically, spiritually and emotionally.”
Weekly classes merge modern integrative medicine with traditional martial arts. The program also uses Skype and has spread around the world to hospitals in New York, California, Michigan as well as here in Canada, Israel, and even the Vatican Hospital in Italy.
Rabbi Goldberg is one of 10 finalists (out of thousands of nominations worldwide) eligible to become CNN’s hero of 2014. If you would like to help vote him to the top, visit: http://cnn.it/1pwZrId until Nov. 16.