Karate is Not Just What I Do; It's Who I am

They tried to make me take ballet but I refused.  I was only six-years old but I categorically rejected the pink tutu.  It just wasn't me.

I enjoyed gymnastics, swimming and neighborhood games like, "Mother May I?"  There were no karate classes in my neighborhood then, back in the early 1960's, and very few in the Boston area.  I also liked reading and writing.

When I was fifteen I wrote a long story about a woman spy who did karate.  Two years later I walked into the dojo and I've never left. 

What I didn't know was that 10,000 kilometers away, in Jerusalem, which is now my home, there was a young man who found karate lessons when he was fourteen, and angry.  His Jerusalem karate class folded after a few years but it was in his blood.  Years later, after I made aliya, he would become my student - and my teacher - as every student teaches me while I'm teaching him or her.

Sara-Rivka Yekutiel
http://www.karateisrael.co.il/