Rabbi Goldberg, or Rabbi G as everyone (including the Pope) calls him, is the man with a plan and a black belt. In 1981, at just 2 years old, Rabbi G’s first-born child Sara died of leukaemia. When she was fighting her disease, she would be the one to reassure the older children in the hospital that it was ok, and they didn’t have to cry. When she was having reactions to chemo, she would assure her father, “It’s OK Abba (Daddy in Hebrew). I love you.”

Sara’s light and love showed Rabbi G the way to starting Kids Kicking Cancer. And now, nearly 25 years after its founding, children fighting cancer across the world are learning how to breathe in the light and blow out the darkness because of this powerful organisation.

While karate is the hook for these children, the true benefit of the practice comes from the breathwork and mediation taught by Rabbi G, our very own Sensei Moses, and many other volunteers. “Everybody has a spirit, whether it’s a soul or a light. Through breathing we know that we can access that light and bring it into ourselves, and blow out the darkness,” explained Rabbi G in a recent chat he had with Voices, dialling in all the way from outside Detroit, Michigan.

Rabbi G holds a first-degree black belt in Choi Kwang Do, a derivation of taekwondo. “It was developed by General Choi and is far more flowing and less locked up than the normal forms of Taekwondo,” explained Rabbi G, “Often when you’re chatting amongst a group of martial artists they’ll sit and talk about their hip replacements, shoulder surgeries, asking ‘Oh, yeah, who did yours? How much titanium do you have?’ It’s like a group at an old age home rather than the youngsters they are! That’s why I prefer Choi Kwang Do, it’s a more of a rounded form that doesn’t lock out the joints, and it’s a very effective fighting form.”

Choi Kwang Do perfectly matches Rabbi G’s personality, mirroring our easy flowing conversation as we chat all things Kids Kicking Cancer and how far the organisation has come. “But really the type of martial arts the teacher practices doesn’t matter, we work with hundreds of martial artists around the globe and the real fighting form is facing that adversary which is inside of ourselves.”

Rabbi G explains that using your breath is the central core of all martial arts. “Breath allows us to focus. The more that we can use our breath to self-regulate and centre ourselves, the more we are in control. The greatest adversary is in here [motions to heart]. The greatest impact is having the ability to breathe in the light and blow out the darkness.

In that regard real martial artists will tell you that what our kids do, it’s the real deal even though it’s non-contact fighting, they’re battling the greatest adversary of their lives.”

Rabbi G painted a startling picture of how isolated, depressed, and down the children fighting cancer must feel while they’re in the throws of treatment. “The child’s lying in a hospital bed and his or her friends are out playing football. These children are being constantly poked, prodded, touched in places no one’s supposed to touch, and their whole sense of autonomy or control is lost. Sometimes they don’t even have control over going to the toilet.

We walk into that room with our Karate outfits on and we say, ‘You’re very powerful. You can take control. We’re going to teach you how to be a powerful martial artist’. And that talks to the brain of a child. Power excites them. Karate excites them.”

Martial arts is certainly a great metaphor for empowerment, as is evident if you’re every fortunate enough to join in one of the special KKC sessions. “When we tell the children ‘Wow! You’re so powerful!’ ‘Have you ever done this before? You’re really good at this!’ You see the child light up. But most importantly, we supply a sense of purpose. As you know, our mantra is Power. Peace. Purpose. They can breathe in this light and push out the pain, fear, and anger. Their purpose is to teach the world. Every child becomes a teacher. When they know that there’s a purpose to their pain, it changes their pain, perception. And that’s the power.”

Kids Kicking Cancer landed in South Africa 6 years ago, and despite having met countless children around the world, Rabbi G remembers his first visit to Baragwanath clearly. “I met Professor Gita Naidu [a member of the KKC board and specialist doctor in leukaemia and more] and I asked her ‘Please introduce me to your children in the greatest pain.’ I had spent hours walking around with her and I noticed a lot of amputations because they don’t do limb salvage surgery like they do in in the USA. There was one little girl who was sitting in the diagnostics room. She had neuropathy and had a lot of pain in her right arm. She had trouble moving it because of the chemo that had caused nerve damage.

I sat with her and did a 10-minute meditation, guiding her to breathe in the light and blow out the darkness of her pain. When she opened up her eyes, she started moving her hand like it was normal.

She said, ‘I don’t feel anything anymore.’

I turned around because I don’t like to cry in front of the kids unless they’re crying. When I left, Gita grabbed me by the arm, tears in her eyes, and said, ‘Rabbi, you have to promise to come back and take care of my babies.’ And now Moses and his team are taking care of her babies on a regular basis. Every child has to know that they may not be able to walk, but they could fly, and knowing that they have this power, that’s the greatest gift that we can give. Frankly, it’s really easy. The only thing that’s holding us back from reaching more and more children in Southern Africa is the funding. So, when a company like yours comes along and pledges such generous support every month, that’s a big deal. Your company has become an important part of helping us spread this kind of transformation.”

I asked Rabbi G if there were any other moments in his Kids Kicking Cancer journey that really stood out and he recalled one particularly “holy” encounter.

“I taught a group of children from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre on how to breathe in the light and blow out the darkness, and also present were some Pfizer executives. They were impressed with what they saw and so their Italian office called me from Rome a few days later, inviting me to Italy to teach breath work.

The Italian team got very excited by the workshop and organised for me to visit the Bambino Gesù Hospital, which is the Vatican’s children’s hospital. So, the orthodox Rabbi received admission from the Pope’s office to teach an Eastern meditative technique to Vatican children!”

While at the hospital, Rabbi G was asked for a very special audience, with none other than Pope Francis himself. “When I met him and shook hands, Pope Francis grabbed me underneath the elbow, which in martial arts is the beginning of a takedown so I instinctively moved in for a hip throw. Luckily, I caught myself before I did any damage and quickly pulled back. The Pope said to me, ‘Please have the children pray for me!’ I was very humbled by that! It was funny, in that split second, I could’ve set Jewish Catholic relations back by 2 000 years.”

Rabbi G’s meeting with the Pope truly demonstrates how the Kids Kicking Cancer children can influence people in the highest places. We’re all just mortals trying to find that light and blow out the darkness, and no one teaches that better than the children, our heroes.

And the lessons don’t stop there. As anyone who has faced cancer or loved someone facing cancer knows, the disease doesn’t affect only one person. Every member of the family is part of the syndrome. “The more we’re able to expand our reach to townships, bringing our services to families as a whole, reaching places that are beyond the cities and hospitals, we’ll be able to bring this light to places of darkness,” explained Rabbi G when I asked how the families of children benefit from the programme.

“The more we teach people how to breathe in the light, blow out the darkness, the more we can make a simple and powerful change in the world. Wherever there are human beings, there’s stress. I’m sure there are places in Antarctica where there’s no stress, but’s that simply because there’s no human life. When you breathe out your body enters a natural sense of relaxation called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which helps relax all of your muscles and is extraordinarily effective in shooing off the stress chemicals. It’s easy to teach and if we get people to do it and help our kids around the world do it, we’re going to change the planet.”

Rabbi G has an important message for all of us at Workforce: “As partners with our children, you’re helping us to spread this light around the planet. When people, especially children, understand that there’s a purpose to their challenge it can build resilience and strength. Rest assured every one of the members of Workforce is now a teacher.

If we can identify the tightness in ourselves and breath in the light and exhale and relax the muscles and blow out the darkness, we’re not only reversing the dangers of stress chemicals on our bodies, but we’re teaching everyone around us how to do the same. And that’s power, peace, and purpose. No matter what you face in your life, you can always breathe in the light.”

On the back of Rabbi G’s book, A Perfect God Created An Imperfect World Perfectly: 30 Life Lessons from Kids Kicking Cancer, is a quote inspired by a ten year old boy named Bernard Johnson, which also works as the prefect closing message from this incredible interview: “Optimism does not mean that everything is going to be great. It means that we can respond to everything with greatness.”