Called toDefend

The small Boro Park gym is brightly lit and pulses with a vibe of focused determination. The treadmills and bench-pressing machines sit untouched, serving as mere background for tonight’s session. It’s a motley group gathered here tonight — chassidish men in full levush; spritely, eager bochurim; and even the gym’s owner from the Newark area — and it’s immediately clear the participants aren’t here to refine their squats.

“After seeing the videos this morning from London, who wouldn’t come?” says Zalman, one of the chassidish contingent, while setting down his rekel and brim-up hat. He’s referring, of course, to the harrowing reports of two Yidden who were stabbed in the fog-laden British capital.

“If I had been there, I would have no clue how to get out of that. They were cornered in that bus stop,” says Menachem, who made the trek from Lakewood for the class.

“That’s exactly what I plan on teaching you right here — how to deal with an attack just like that one,” comes a commanding voice from the center of the room.

Rabbi Michoel Shapiro, congregational rabbi and owner of Krav Combat Academy, is all set to train this next cohort how to deal with life-threatening attacks. And while the thought of an Orthodox rabbi teaching self-defense classes in the heart of Boro Park may seem incongruous, today’s ominous reality has seen stranger things happen.

Imagine you’re walking down 13th Avenue in Brooklyn or perhaps Golders Green Road in North West London, simply minding your own business, when a burly-looking fellow starts to approach. Next thing you know, he’s yelling, “Stop the genocide in Gaza!” and flashing brass knuckles. In seconds, everything becomes a blur.

It may seem like doomsaying, but unfortunately, in many cities around the world, Jewish life and the freedom to roam the streets unharmed can no longer be taken for granted.

And facing that reality, many are beginning to feel that the natural next step is taking action to be prepared. Thousands of frum adults learn CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, deepwater treading, or how to use a fire extinguisher — not because these are skills they’ll need every day, but in the event that something happens, they want to be prepared.

The statistical surge in antisemitic violence has fundamentally altered the sense of security Jews around the globe used to enjoy.

It’s obvious we’re seeing a pervasive level of targeted aggression within major urban areas. Faced with the facts, many people are choosing to learn basic self-defense skills so they won’t be caught unaware if hate moved off the headlines and into their daled amos, and Rabbi Michoel Shapiro, a.k.a. “The Fighting Rabbi,” is ready to fill that need.

Rabbi Michoel Shapiro of Hillside, New Jersey, is not only an ordained rav who teaches his congregants Torah and chassidus, but he also runs the Krav Combat Academy, using the martial arts skills he learned as a young man to teach others how to defend themselves and their loved ones. He brings an eclectic mix of influencing factors to the table, having been born into a secular Jewish background, an education obtained in a yekkish yeshivah, with semichah from Chabad, and 25 years of experience teaching Krav Maga.

The various influences that coalesced to produce the man Michoel is today started well before he was born — driven most significantly by his mother, Orah, who was actually raised in an Italian Catholic family in New York as Lucretia.

“My mother was done with Catholicism by the time she finished college,” Michoel shares. “She wasn’t buying the whole story.” Having noticed some of her Jewish neighbors as a child and seeing their refinement in character and remarkable honesty, she was intrigued and began studying Judaism.

She was particularly inspired by her father’s Jewish employer who had shown the family unusual thoughtfulness. Her father was a World War II veteran and needed to remain below a certain income bracket in order to maintain some key benefits. His boss would routinely go out of his way to creatively assist him without jeopardizing those benefits — like buying them badly needed household items such as a new washer and dryer.

Lucretia’s thirst led her to Jewish social events where she began mingling with Jews — and ultimately met a certain young man named Richard Shapiro, who was raised as a Conservative Jew, but wasn’t chasing meaning like she was at that time. Regardless, she pursued the relationship with a Rus-like fervor, committing to conversion. Lucretia promised to lead a life of Judaism, convinced that her husband’s passion would be ignited shortly as well.

The Conservative geirus process went quickly. “She was barely taught anything about Torah and mitzvos, aside from things like Shabbos and the Yamim Tovim,” Michoel says. “The early years of their marriage were quite far from real Yiddishkeit.”

The Shapiros had four children, Michoel being the oldest, and they were hardly raised like your typical frum Jews. “We grew up with TV and bacon on Saturday mornings. My mother was very into us being Jewish, and she was extremely proud of our identity, but in practice there wasn’t really much there. She davened to Hashem as best she could, and we kept certain annual observances like a Pesach Seder and Chanukah menorah lighting.

“She wanted us to learn about Judaism, even if her knowledge was limited. As I entered second grade, she decided to send us to the local Solomon Schechter Day School in White Plains, New York, where we lived.”

Growing up in the ’80s, Michoel took a real interest in martial arts. Those years featured the Karate Kid craze, when the concept of karate-style fighting skills was extremely popular in the media. “We didn’t only watch martial-arts themed material — we also read a lot,” Michoel says. “I really got to know a lot about fighting styles at ten or eleven years old.”

Michoel will never forget the incidents that solidified his conviction to learn self-defense properly. The first assault took place when he was in seventh grade. He was walking to a yeshivah shabbaton event with a couple of friends when they noticed a few tough-looking teenagers following them, jeering intimidatingly. Michoel turned at one point, saying they didn’t have any money and would like to be left alone.

“The bigger one grabbed me by my lapels and flung my little body onto the hood of a car, staring into my eyes,” he recounts. “He just glared at me for a long ten seconds until he dropped me and they were off. I remember feeling extremely vulnerable.”

In another run-in with local hoodlums, 13-year-old Michoel was playing ball near his school when he noticed yet another group of hulky teenagers hanging out near the yard. He was watching them closely, out of concern for what they were up to, when one of them approached him. “What are you staring at?” the tall ruffian asked rhetorically.

Michoel froze, and in an instant, the teenager punched him squarely in the face. “I remember my whole upper body doing a 180, and I caught myself on a nearby car as I wavered in and out of consciousness for a moment.” The thugs laughed loudly and ran off as one of the school faculty members came running at them.

“By the second incident, I was already familiar with a nice amount of moves, but obviously, I was not properly primed for a moment of facing off a real threat,” he says. “And I remember daydreaming for years to come how I could’ve defended myself and had them all running the other way, instead of just being a sitting duck.”

My phone conversation with Michoel was intriguing, but seeing it live gives his story a whole new dimension, and I look on avidly as the rabbi and martial-arts instructor with the chassidish untrimmed beard faces the group that has come to pick up the basics of self-defense. It’s easy to see why he’s a successful shul rabbi — he has a warm and friendly demeanor, and his candid speech is both articulate and confident — but his posture gives away that this is no ordinary rabbi. His shoulders are squared, his back is ramrod straight, and behind his smiling face are eyes that appear to be ever-watchful, incredibly observant of their surroundings.

Once the participants are gathered in a semicircle ready for the class to start, Michoel begins with one of the most important ideas he will share all night:

Michoel goes on to explain that while Krav Maga is a form of martial arts that teaches a plethora of fighting moves designed to incapacitate — and sometimes kill — another person, the real focus needs to be on prevention. The curriculum he developed over the years is one that teaches his students the skills necessary for stopping an attack before it unfolds, and only actually hurting a would-be-assailant if there’s no other possible choice.

“In a wrestling match or in a boxing ring, the two fighters are consenting to trade blows. They get up there in their gear and they get into fighting positions, fully aware of what’s about to take place and of the risks involved. They’re also aiming for a fair game. But what we’re doing in this class is not about fighting or fair game, or seeing who is stronger or more skilled. It’s about dealing with real-life scenarios that can result in serious injury or death — and how to stop that from happening.”

Michoel explains that while some of us may harbor childish throwbacks to karate sessions in a studio, real-life scenarios can pose imminent danger. Instead of padded floors, there’s concrete, parked cars nearby, and perhaps broken glass; instead of fair blows versus fouls, there’s just an attacker with one intent: Cause as much injury as possible. Most importantly, instead of two players getting into their positions and preparing for combat, there are surprise elements — sudden approaches, threatening screams, and sometimes deadly weapons.

And that understanding leads to the vital lesson that undergirds all of Krav Maga: presence of mind. “If you’re aware of your surroundings and are subconsciously ready to disarm an attacker or disrupt his actions, then you’ve already solved three-quarters of the problem. Criminals choose easy targets, and you’re already off their list at that point.”

Michoel asks me to step forward for a brief demonstration. He drapes a T-shirt over my shoulder and instructs me to try and keep it there while he attempts to snatch it away.

Surprisingly, despite him telling me exactly what he is about to do, I can’t seem to stop the fabric from slipping away in time. After five failed attempts to protect my charge, Michoel explains the mechanics behind the failure. “Your brain takes time to process what it sees, like a computer.”

He then demonstrates how this plays out in the street. Michoel steps in close, mimicking how an attack is set up before it begins. “I am already here, in your personal space. Your arms are slack, not quite ready to respond, and you aren’t sure exactly where I am going to strike from. Because you’ve never done this before, you are still mentally calculating how to position yourself. Meanwhile, all I have to do is execute a swift, easy motion that I have practiced numerous times.”

But with a few weeks of training, he assures the class firmly, anyone can thwart an attack like that, or even something far more sinister. The class will learn to detect a threat and adopt a defensive position well before anyone can enter their personal space, with their reflexes conditioned to respond in a heartbeat.

While the young Michael dreamed of mastering combat skills, his interest in martial arts fell by the wayside when life took an unexpected turn toward a more serious realm. On one trip to the local YMHA center for karate lessons, Orah saw a sign advertising classes in Jewish Mysticism.

“My mother was always starving for more knowledge about Yiddishkeit — and the concept of mysticism piqued her interest,” Michoel relates. To her good fortune, the classes turned out to be a shiur on Tanya, delivered by the local Chabad shaliach. Michoel remembers his mother experiencing an epiphany, exclaiming: “This is Judaism!”

As the family drew closer to Orthodox Judaism, they decided to move to White Plains, New York, just a mile away from Rabbi Dovid Morris, the Chabad rabbi who was leading them in their journey. And just a year after the move, the family was keeping kosher and were fully shomer Shabbos. It was at that point that Rabbi Morris’s rav, Rabbi Mordechai Altein, suggested that Orah and her children redo the geirus process — this time the halachic way.

Michoel was just ten years old back then, but he still remembers the sense of significance that accompanied the process. “I still remember doing the hatafas dam bris and going to the mikveh.… Even as a young kid, I felt like I was entering a new world. I felt incredible to know I finally did what had to be done to be a real Jew.”

Being full-fledged Jews and keeping the halachos for real ushered in a wave of ripple effects to the family’s life. “First, it was getting awkward that my mother was showing up at school with a hair covering. That was unheard of at Solomon Schechter. That and other things set us apart. So we switched to SAR in Riverdale, which was more of a Modern Orthodox school. It was coed, and the kids still did a lot of movies and sports watching… but it was Orthodox.”

Before long, the Shapiros began considering another change in their children’s schooling. Orah felt drawn toward a more fully Chabad chinuch, while Richard — now Yerachmiel — wanted to be sure the children would also receive a strong secular education alongside their limudei kodesh. In the end, they chose Breuer’s, a school that reflected that balance.

That left Michoel, a 12-year-old in seventh grade, suddenly finding himself in a new world. “It was a massive culture shock; no girls, no movies, no sports. We were suddenly learning Gemara… and everything outside of learning was considered bittul Torah.”

But he pushed himself to remain fully on board. “Whether it was easy or not, I knew with all my heart that Hashem had created the world, and He had a unique mission for me. I spoke with Him often, in my own little voice, begging that He would lead me in the right direction. Soon, I quit everything else and started learning.”

Michoel spent his high school years learning intensely in Breuer’s. But there were other shifts happening in the family at the same time, and by the time he graduated, his father sported a beard and kapoteh. Yerachmiel had finally taken a liking to the Lubavitch way of life.

Hoping to align his family life with yeshivah, Michoel and his brother, the only guys in Breuer’s with budding beards, chose to head to Morristown, Chabad’s yeshivah gedolah.

Michoel adapted well to Morristown, and upon leaving, did a year of shlichus in New Haven, Connecticut, before settling down to learn for his semichah in 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Lubavitch chassidus. By now, Michoel was not only growing in Gemara and halachah — he immersed himself, heart and soul, in Chabad chassidus. He also took a liking to other chassidishe seforim, including Shem MiShmuel, Sfas Emes, and the seforim of Rav Tzadok. “I used to wish I could go back to my friends from Breuer’s and share some of it with them,” he says.

At the same time, as a 22-year-old living in a bochur apartment in Crown Heights, Michoel’s old passion for martial arts finally began to resurface. He dreamed of learning chassidus with those who were unfamiliar with its teachings as well as teaching combat skills to help protect Jews. “That would be a dream life, teaching my two passions,” Michoel remembers thinking. He couldn’t have possibly known that one day that dream would come to fruition.

When Michoel heard of a Krav Maga class being taught by an Israeli instructor in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, he hopped on a train to check it out. “I was curious about this new Israeli fighting style that had gripped the fascination of martial-arts experts all around the United States,” he says.

Seeing the class in action was exciting, and Michoel wanted to join, but the instructor wasn’t offering all-male classes. “If you get a bunch of guys from your yeshivah that want to start a class, I’ll start an all-male session just for you,” he joked, not realizing that Michoel was going to head home and do just that.

The Krav-Maga-Chabad bochurim class lasted for a year, but eventually, participation petered out, with most of the boys giving up the hobby, which required a weekly trip to Manhattan, for other pursuits, mostly marriage. But Michoel persisted, practicing in his apartment between sedorim, until his instructor pulled him aside and told him the best news: “You’re ready to become certified as an instructor.”

A high-ranking Krav Maga lead examiner traveled in from Eretz Yisrael to oversee the exams — and he certified Michoel in August 2001 as a top-level Krav Maga instructor. “It was a crazy period for me,” Michoel says, “because I was taking my semichah farhers then. So I was reviewing my knowledge in halachah in the beis medrash while simultaneously practicing my moves in front of the mirror at nights.”

Back in the gym, the class is listening intently to Michoel’s introductory lesson. He emphasizes that this discipline is far more about mindset than moves. The most vital skill in self-defense is awareness — the ability to take in vital details while navigating a public space.

“When you walk down the street scrolling on your phone, that’s one kind of mindset,” he notes. “When you’re crossing the street, looking for oncoming traffic, that’s a more heightened level of awareness. When you’re in the midst of an attack, you’re fully alert and searching for a way out — but by then, it’s usually too late.”

The goal, Michoel says, is to consistently maintain that middle tier of awareness, much like the state one enters when crossing a busy intersection: not paralyzed by anxiety, yet never totally spaced out. It’s about being acutely aware of one’s environment and every potential danger, while still retaining the ability to enjoy the surroundings.

Explaining how a student can be trained to handle such a high-pressure moment, Michoel introduces the “OODA Loop,” a decision-making framework discovered by Colonel John Boyd. A legendary US Air Force fighter pilot nicknamed “40-Second Boyd” for his ability to defeat any opponent in a dogfight in under a minute, Boyd realized that victory wasn’t just about the speed of the aircraft, but the speed of the pilot’s mind. He broke the process down into four stages: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. Boyd hypothesized that by cycling through these steps faster than an opponent, you can “get inside their loop,” causing them to hesitate and fail while you are already executing your next move.

Michoel demonstrates how this plays out in a setting far more mundane than a cockpit. He explains that for a person who is fully cognizant of their surroundings, the OODA loop is already in motion before a threat even emerges. Imagine walking down a street: You see the angles, the parked cars, the shadows, and the people approaching. Because you are mentally present, you have already filtered the environment. You aren’t starting from zero when a threat appears; you’ve already completed the “Observe” and “Orient” phases. By the time an attacker moves, you can already “Decide” to get into defensive position, preparing yourself to “Act.”

To prove this point, Michoel asks one of the participants to approach him and make a sudden move toward him. The chassidishe fellow feigns walking while minding his own business and then makes his best attempt at lunging forward unexpectedly, but he finds that Michoel hasn’t been caught off guard in the slightest. His eyes had been tracked on the student from the moment he moved, and his body had subtly shifted into a strike-prepared stance before the “attacker” even entered his personal space. “I didn’t have to ‘decide’ what to do when he got close,” Michoel notes.

Nevertheless, Michoel doesn’t gloss over the complexity of street dynamics, which often involve more than one predator. Michoel demonstrates a scenario where an attacker approaches from the front while his buddy sneaks up from behind. He shows the class how to maintain a 360-degree scan even while engaged. As the student approaches, Michoel doesn’t stay static; he moves laterally, rotating his body while addressing the threat. This circling motion forces the lead attacker to turn, effectively using him as a pivot point that allows Michoel to scan the area behind him. “You never let them box you in,” he says. “You keep your eyes on the fellow in front, but you move in a way that forces your field of vision to sweep the entire room.”

Michoel cites the Six-Day War as the ultimate example of OODA loop dominance. By launching preemptive strikes that decimated the Egyptian air force on the ground, the Israeli military destroyed the enemy’s ability to Orient and Decide. “The opposition was still trying to ‘Observe’ what had happened while the IDF was already ‘Acting’ on the next phase of the plan,” Michoel underscores. “Whether it’s a tank division in the Sinai or a Yid protecting his family on a dark street, the principle is the same: The one who cycles through the loop fastest is most likely to get home safe.”

What’s even more fascinating is that Michoel is teaching the class to respond to these attackers and get into attack mode without doing anything overtly conspicuous. The posture he recommends appears harmless to the average bystander, but screams volumes to a potential assailant: This guy is solid on his feet. He’s not an easy target.

Michoel references a remark often made by the Lubavitcher Rebbe regarding the words of Chazal, “Haba l’hargecha hashkem l’hargo — if someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” The Rebbe used to ask:

The tactics being taught in this introductory lesson are a microcosm of the game plan for the course: an emphasis not on an exhaustive list of moves, but on a targeted plan for self-defense. Whether that means disarming an active shooter or an assailant with a blade, flooring an unarmed attacker, or simply escaping the scene and ushering the more vulnerable bystanders out of harm’s way, the focus remains singular.

In a nutshell, Michoel took the vast Krav Maga compendium and whittled it down to a core curriculum specifically geared toward the needs of frum Yidden. “My lessons are handcrafted for people who want to minimize or eliminate a tragedy,” Michoel says. “All the fluff and competitive sparring found in most classes simply aren’t necessary for us.” Michoel clarifies that in the standard Krav Maga literature, there might be several different moves for deflecting each specific type of attack. “I’ve been through all of them,” he says. “And I found that most of that knowledge can be a burdensome overload.”

Michoel’s renewed interest in martial arts was sparked as a bochur, but his life’s trajectory allowed him to refine his passion to the place where he is today, helping Jews all over defend themselves from attack.

After completing the semichah program in Crown Heights, Michoel made a last-minute decision to join a friend on a summer trip to San Diego to assist at a Chabad House. His intended three-week sojourn turned into a ten-year stay; Michoel developed a close bond with the local shaliach’s family and the wider community, finding a new home on the West Coast.

The community embraced Michoel, drawn to his gift for articulating intricate Torah concepts in a relatable way. Before long, he was asked to serve as the assistant rabbi, providing spiritual guidance and giving shiurim for years. Yet while he was seeing success on that front, he lived with the persistent ache of being an alter bochur far from home. He traveled constantly to New York and across the country in search of his soulmate, but no prospects materialized. Michoel’s devoted parents were growing older, waiting to see Yiddishe nachas from their bechor — the young ger who had transformed into a respected talmid chacham — but time was slipping away, and no l’chayim was in sight.

But determined to pursue his passion, Michoel supplemented his community work by teaching Krav Maga, slowly filling his classes. He utilized his time to upgrade his own skills, signing up for elite courses to learn military-grade Krav Maga — a system far more advanced and lethal than the civilian version he had already mastered.

Through his relentless study and practice, Michoel familiarized himself with hundreds of specialized moves. But as his proficiency grew, he became increasingly aware of Chazal’s wisdom when they said, “Tafasta merubah, lo tafasta — if you try to grasp too much, you grasp nothing at all.” He realized that for a prospective student, the sheer volume of information could be more distracting than helpful in a moment of crisis. This realization allowed him to design a streamlined curriculum tailor-made for the frum world.

After a decade in San Diego, Michoel’s wait for the chuppah finally ended. He met his wife, Chava Zviklin of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and eventually resettled in Hillside, New Jersey. Today, at 48, Michoel is approaching his 25th year of teaching Krav Maga. “I travel for classes all the time,” he says. From school programs for children to adult sessions in local gyms across the Tristate area, Michoel is now seeing an increasing demand from heimish crowds, including the burgeoning chassidish community in neighboring Linden, New Jersey.

Hillside also opened another chapter in Michoel’s life, starting from a backyard minyan that one of his neighbors opened during the Covid lockdown. His neighbor was also Lubavitch, so the minyan davened Nusach Ari — but the attendance was not limited to Chabad-affiliated Jews. People who originated from Flatbush, Boro Park, Chicago — whether they were accustomed to Sephard, Ashkenaz, yotzros or no yotzros — started frequenting this emerging minyan that seemed to be welcoming for everyone.

The harmony was real, and after the pandemic, the new kehillah decided to stay together, purchasing a house which they transformed into an actual shul. And what better rav could they pick than someone who had decades of experience in teaching — not to mention the ability to command undivided attention?

“NO!”

The cry is so loud, the walls of the gym are literally shuddering. The participant Michoel is demonstrating his surprise attack with jumps a foot high into the air, and the shock factor visibly ripples through the rest of us in the room.

“The idea is to get into a defensive posture well before your boundary is violated, but getting into the posture doesn’t mean giving it away,” Michoel says. He shows how he’s simply engaging the individual with an ordinary question, “What’s this all about?” while lifting his hands in a questioning manner — not revealing that this is all a tactic. “You want your hands to be higher than his, and within reach of his head so you can strike in a moment.”

The shift between the questioning, defensive posture and the strike flung right at the participant’s face happens at lightning speed, like the crack of a whip. Michoel’s deafening scream adds to the element of shock and surprise, totally disorienting the attacker and restarting his OODA loop.

The surprise factor, the swiftness, the power, and sheer force of the defensive strike — it’s all predicated on the mindfulness of the one throwing the punch. And this is where Michoel finds a direct parallel between his two worlds.

“When a person is engaged in Torah study, raising a family of erliche Yidden, building a community — he has to meditate on these things. He has to look in the mirror at night and recognize the indescribable value of the gifts Hashem has given him. He has to internalize… why he wants to live. Why he wants his loved ones to live.”

When a person is living with that deep-felt understanding and appreciation consciously each and every day, his physical capabilities in a time of emergency are compounded exponentially.

We’ve all heard of the concept of a mother lifting a car off her child, a phenomenon known scientifically as hysterical strength. In moments of extreme stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system triggers a massive surge of adrenaline. This surge increases heart rate and respiration, but most importantly, it overrides the body’s natural safety limiters that usually prevent us from using 100 percent of our muscle fibers to avoid injury. In an instant, the brain allows the body to access its absolute maximum physical potential to preserve life.

Michoel explains that the biggest advantage we have over hate-filled terrorists is that we have a ruchniyusdig attachment and desire to save our spouses, children, and fellow Yidden. If meditated upon constantly and accessed correctly, this can put a person with the proper training on jet fuel.

“When I teach, I often start my sessions just talking about chovas ha’adam b’olamo, a person’s core purpose and mission in This World. I talk about basics in Yiddishkeit, and the inherent value each neshamah possesses — and how no one should dare try to take that potential away or suggest that their death is a foregone conclusion.”

Michoel further notes that this training often offers side benefits that can reverberate outward, positively affecting other aspects of a student’s life. For instance, he explains that they learn to respond to an attacker not through the blind heat of anger, but through what he terms “righteous indignation.” This shift in perspective, he finds, actually helps students avoid anger at home or in the workplace. By practicing how to remain inwardly calm and collected even during a simulated assault, a student develops a baseline of tranquility that carries over into his personal life. Michoel teaches them to channel what might otherwise be a reckless, zealous rage into a disciplined tool used only for the right purposes.

There’s no getting around the raised eyebrows when people hear Michoel is a rabbi and a martial arts instructor, and the nature of his work inevitably invites a difficult question: How does the study of Krav Maga intersect with — or perhaps even detract from — the foundational concepts of bitachon and tefillah?

Michoel addresses the inquiry with a ready smile, noting that the concerns are often multilayered. Many frum people worry about the Eastern spiritual influences, bowing rituals, and the general culture of aggression that permeate most martial arts. “These are all legitimate questions,” he says, “and in most schools, there aren’t good answers.” Michoel has one, though: He has stripped away the martial arts culture entirely. In his classes, there is no bowing, no hierarchy of belts, and no Eastern meditations. Instead, the focus is on practical learning modules tailored to the sensitivities of a Torah environment.

He frames the necessity of self-defense through a paradigm that most Yidden can relate to: emergency readiness. Just as we learn CPR to manage the critical minutes before Hatzalah arrives, Michoel views self-defense as managing the gap between the onset of violence and the arrival of professional help. “Nobody hears a first-aid tip and asks why we don’t train everyone to be EMTs,” he points out. “We recognize that there are the professionals who show up later — but those on scene, which can be anyone at any time, must know the basics for life preservation.” By shifting the goal from “winning a fight” to simply getting home safe, he aligns the training with the standard hishtadlus we perform daily, like wearing seat belts or locking our doors.

Ultimately, Michoel believes that preparing oneself to face a rodef is a responsibility rather than a contradiction to bitachon, similar to how halachah dictates that a father should teach his son how to swim or learn a trade. He insists that a ben Torah does not lose his refinement by learning to protect his life, nor does a child become aggressive by learning to set boundaries. The goal is to provide them with the clarity to avoid a threat whenever possible, and the skill to stop one only when absolutely necessary.

As the lesson draws to a close, Michoel divides the group into pairs to practice the art of preemptive defense — neutralizing a threat before the assailant can land the first blow.

We all choose a partner and stand across from each other, splitting the room between attackers and defenders. The exercise immediately triggers a rush of adrenaline; even in a controlled setting, the sight of an imminent “attacker” sparks a fight-or-flight response. There is something liberating about mastering the upright defensive posture — backing away with measured steps and hands raised in a gesture that is outwardly polite yet sends a silent, foreboding message: You may want to harm me, but just know that I am ready for you.

The drill serves as a sobering reminder that, in the real world, the partner’s exaggerated furrowed brow and heimish beard will be replaced by the face of a true monster. The safety of the gym will vanish the moment a protester, fueled by intoxication or perhaps the violent rhetoric of a hate-spewing professor, starts barreling toward you. In that split second, the comfort of knowing your escape route — or the precision of your defensive blow — is everything.

Because there may be 70 wolves circling this one little sheep — but that doesn’t mean we can’t be ready for them.