My challenge was to do 40 speaking engagements, demonstrations or special classes in order to celebrate my 40^th year of karate training (which was from November 2014 until October 2015).

The first stop was the Deaf Club in Ashkelon on Monday, December 23^rd.  I took my student, Yiftach Guvrin, some family photos and my rudimentary knowledge of Israeli Sign Language.  I told my life story (which can be summed us:  difficult childhood, lots of anger which was useful for hitting the heavy bag, now I’m happy).   Yiftach and I did kata and bunkai (the self-defense application of the kata).  It was very well received.

Since then I’ve spoken in diverse places such as The Dojo Bar in Naha, Okinawa; a gathering for Holocaust survivors in Rishon L’zion;  my grandson’s kindergarten in Tekoa; a camp for children living with autism; a club for Deaf-Blind people in Tel Aviv – a speech followed with a class in which they learned Pushing Hands technique; the Netanya AACI club for elderly immigrants; and my own living room on a Shabbat afternoon in March, to a gathering of twenty 18-year-old women from my daughter Ariella’s military preparation program.  One of Ariella’s teachers summed up the speech:  They gave her lemons and she made lemonade.

I would like to tell you that I reached my goal, but here it is, 2017 and I just recently arrived at number 18.  However, I’m not giving up!  Perhaps I was a bit naïve to think that I could do it in one year…  (Yes, that was totally unrealistic.)  It’s going to take longer, but I can do it!!!