In an Israeli town that’s acquired a reputation for division and strife, one man is using mountain biking to teach kids how to push their limits — and get along with each other, no matter what kind of yarmulke is under the helmet.
We’re out in the Judean Hills a ten-minute walk from the nearest road but we might as well have been transported back centuries.
Ten kids are sitting on a low stone wall built during the Second Temple period. Around them the spring’s first red anemone and purple cyclamen are sprouting and wild sage crawls along the wall’s weathered bricks.
Before them stands a middle-aged man with a long bushy red beard. His calves are the size of most men’s thighs. His name isNachumWasoskyand the kids affectionately call him the Biking Rebbe.
They have stopped midway through an hour-plus bike ride for a lesson on life. Today’s subject is diligence one of a score of subjects that Wasosky will teach the kids over a yearlong course. The kids sit patiently their bike helmets strapped snugly to their heads as their peyos peek out from underneath the polystyrene foam.
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