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By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/101955408.html The 130 children and young adults with whom I spent a few days share two things. They are all Jewish, and they all contend daily with serious and debilitating illness. Many of them have done so all of their lives. You would think that this might provide the ultimate mussar (personal growth) ride for Elul, an in-your-face confrontation with your own mortality, and the need to be grateful to God for life itself and the parts of it we take for granted. You might think so, but you would be wrong. It’s not the ultimate ride at all. It may be the teeter-totter compared to the Montezuma’s Revenge of lessons you can garner from these kids. In the three years that he was supposed to be sitting in classrooms at Cardozo Law School, my son Ari – together with some valiant and dedicated partners – built up Kids of Courage, by offering gradually larger and more exciting programs for young people who face challenges you don’t want to know about. They include the Jewish genetic diseases, as well as the alphabet soup of development gone awry – CP, MD, CR, etc. And of course, various cancers. Some conditions are so rare they have no names and no medical literature. Armies are never better than their supply lines. When Kids of Courage moves, two lines move out with them, offering complex medical as well as logistical support. The sight of over a hundred kids, many in wheelchairs hooked up to elaborate apparatus, but all smothered with attention and love by their volunteer counselors (everyone – with the sole exception of a sole part-time secretary – in Kids of Courage is a volunteer) overwhelms the adults who meet up with them. An entire Continental jet couldn’t contain them all on the flight from Newark to Los Angeles. Illusionist David Blaine turned up for the ride, and entertained en route. Nothing thereafter could contain their enthusiasm, or limit the Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's Name) they made. Katie Couric sent a video crew, and CBS will be doing a segment on them. MLB will be running clips about them for two weeks, taken from their appearance at an Angels game. Returning from that game, the kids were taken, unannounced, to the block of Mann’s Chinese, where 12 Lamborghinis pulled in behind the buses, and their owners spent three hours hurtling them down Hollywood Boulevard. Tourists, expecting to be entertained by the over-the-top atmosphere of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, were instead enthralled by the sight of three hundred young people, led by identifiably religious counselors, singing and gyrating with a joy that has nothing to do with what is usually celebrated in LaLaLand. They stopped to watch and to photograph, as did the tourist buses. So did a media pool, resulting in clips of the event appearing on television stations across the country.
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