It all began a few weeks ago when I forgot that I’m not 10 and a half anymore, and I tried to reach something behind me with my arm and overstretched.
This happens to people who:
a) Their body is approaching fifty while their head is still in adolescence.
b) Move very little physically and generally want class with zero effort.
Well, as is customary in our community, I ignored the pain until I simply couldn’t anymore. I asked ChatGPT what to do, and it sent me to an orthopedist, who sent me for an X-ray, and in turn referred me to physiotherapy.
The physiotherapist examined me thoroughly until he found a point around the knee. Pressing on it made me say *Shema Yisrael* in German with great intent, and he said: “Excellent, we’ve found it.”
This morning I was with him again, and he explained that my *pes anserinus*—in Hebrew, “goose’s foot,” the tendon attachment point on the inside of the knee—is what hurts and what needs to be worked on. I, for my part, remain convinced that *pes anserinus* was an antisemite.
“And now what?” I asked, as we went down to the torture chamber of the clinic, where I saw a series of machines that exist only in gyms.
Well, here came the cliché. And here I realized that this morning I had the perfect post for the month of Elul and beyond. “Now,” said the physiotherapist, “I’m looking for which machine will best activate your *pes anserinus*.”
Remembering the *Shema Yisrael* I had said earlier, I asked: “But why?” He only smiled and motioned me onto the machine. He calculated how many kilos the painful leg could push. When I said I thought that was the maximum, he added a few more kilos and said: “Here we work with the leg, not the mouth. Push harder.”
He explained: “To heal such pain, you need to make it work harder. The more you sit still, the less it will hurt, but it won’t heal—and the pain will always be there whenever you do move. The more you train with me, the more it will hurt, but the area will actually heal.”
Resistance exists so that you can heal the pain. Without resistance, without opposition, without challenge—you stay in the same place. And staying in the same place actually means going backward, because the world moves forward, and so does your body and your age.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I’ve heard many times that without resistance there’s no growth, that there’s no way to bypass pain and struggle if you want to grow. Hours of farbrengens and talks, countless lectures and articles have told me the same. But today I truly understood it.”
He got really excited about the idea and the perspective, so I seized the opportunity and asked to stop the leg exercise because of the pain. He just smiled and said: “*Nein nein, wir machen weiter.* Here we work with the leg, not with the mouth.”
Shabbat Shalom, and a good and sweet new year,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski