Becoming a Krav Maga fighter

My Jewish friends - You Are Not Alone

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I’ve always been into Jews. Maybe it was reading Leon Uris’ Exodus when I was young, or maybe it was the Sunday school stories, always the underdogs: David standing defiant against the Philistine monster, the crowds rippling with mockery but silenced when their giant fell. Even as a child, I read books on the horrors of the Holocaust; I imagined smuggling food to Jews that I hid in a cardboard shelter in the bush near my home in Fort Garry.  

After fleeing Winnipeg when I was 19, I went to work on a farm in Switzerland.  My first chance to take a vacation was off to Auschwitz, perhaps less popular than the red light district in Amsterdam, but I had to go.  I saw the most famous lie, Arbeit Macht Frei, above the camp gates and saw the tracks where they brought in families, separating them, sending some to work and some to perish that same day.

I did not pick where I was born; I did not pick the year; why was it not my family suffocating in a cold brick room, leaving white nail scratches on the bricks?  I wondered if they knew; I wondered why they could not flee. But they were unarmed, they were exhausted, they were in shock, beaten and abused.  

But stories of the birth of Israel, as defiant as David, filled my bookshelf next. Israel was the last refuge, but surely, in Canada today, we would let them be. Such prejudices should stay trapped in history books.

But today, in Canada, It’s like Germany in the 30s.  These were the words of the father of one of my Jewish students. He said the words so flatly, such resignation; he said that the Jews had been here before. 

A week later, it became more real. I was hauled into a tiny office at my university, and an administrator shoved a suspension letter full of threats.  

I asked, what social media post you are suspending me for?  For saying I stood with Israel?  But he would not take the bait.  He said he had not read anything; he just stood there, inexplicably angry, looking at the empty table and avoiding eye contact.  

I had never seen such anger and vitriol from an organization. Their accusations were just name-calling, gossip by staff, faculty and students evolving and mutating into accusations of criminality, and lawyered letters from strangers, dripping with hatred and unearned indignation. Over the next months, my anger evolved into indignation, betrayal, and finally, a resignation with no regrets.

It was a broken admission that although the arc of the moral universe was long, it would never turn toward justice, and certainly not for Jews. 

Amateur lawyering kept me up at night and drove my lawyer and me mad. I worked on projects and taught at another university, but I knew I needed something physical, something gritty and sweaty, and no, a gym membership or Peloton wasn’t enough. 

As I’d been making friends with so many random Jews online, I knew it had to be Krav Maga. 

As a child, I was so uncoordinated I couldn’t do jumping jacks; dancing was a coordination dream galaxies away. I hadn’t been in a fight since grade seven, which I told my kids I’d won, though I probably lost—memory can be self-serving.  

Sensei Mike was my instructor; he made me do pushups anytime I said sorry; he teamed me with a gifted accountant he’d been training for months.  The accountant was leaving Canada soon; his wife said the anti-semitism was too much; it was the chants of death to the Jews that had been the final straw. 

Krav Maga is based on leverage, momentum, and physics. I had to learn to roll and not get injured, but I had already injured myself in the warmup. The second lesson was delayed by the less-than-glorious injury of a nine-millimetre calcium stone blocking my ureter, leaving me full of pain and pacing in an emergency waiting room. At the same time, half of Vaughan, who didn’t have family doctors or Google, went in before me without appearing to have much wrong. 

But you never know, and after arranging surgery, the Jewish staff urologist laser blasted that pee-blocking boulder to sand and left me ready to get back to Krav Maga. But only as soon as my pee hit the proper shade of yellow and any bit of plastic they left in me was removed. 

On the mat at the Krav Maga training centre, Sensei Mike showed remarkable patience as I failed at doing in slow motion what I was supposed to do at lightning speed; somehow, I would one day have to move quicker, substituting fast, involuntary reaction for slow cerebral processing.  

I plugged away, learning the power of my elbows, trying leg hooks and sweeps, getting freaked out at the idea of eye gouging, and learning to pull myself up off the ground without the convenience of a handle.  Mike had trained the IDF, and I believed him; he moved so fast that I could barely track him with my eye, let alone respond. 

But I liked the fact that almost everyone there was Jewish, even though I’m sure that even now, I bet anyone with at least two digits in their age could kick my ass.  Will I ever really use it?  Probably not, and if I were looking at self-defence, I’d probably be better off taking a class on how not to lip people off or the art of avoiding violent people. 

But Sensei Mike said Jewish people don’t teach classes in “Advanced Keeping Your Mouth Shut” or “Level Four Running Away When Being Chased.” 

So it’s Krav Maga for me, and if I say sorry for any mistakes, I’ll be back on the gym floor doing pushups. I want to be decent at it before I go to Israel when this bloody mess at the university wraps up. 

Please subscribe and get at least three pieces /essays per week with open comments. It’s $5 per month and less than $USD 4. I know everyone says hey, it’s just a cup of coffee (with me, not per day but just one per month), but if you’re like me, you go, “Hey, I only want so many cups of coffee!” I get it. I don’t subscribe to many here because I can’t afford it.

But I only ask that when you choose your coffee, please choose mine. Cheers.

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