Karate mom gets her kicks in

Her teaching style is like a performance. She can be very serious and also very funny.”

Kyle Murchison, Assistant Sensei

Kiai.

“Kiai is just a loud, from-the-diaphragm sound that forces you to tighten the abs. It makes your moves stronger,” said Rebecca Obstfeld, of Oceanside, mother of two and black belt in karate, adding, “And it terrifies your enemies.”

Obstfeld was talking to a group of about 20 seniors at the Young Israel of Wavecrest & Bayswater Senior Center in Far Rockaway, where she teaches weekly classes. Her students were learning how to block. To test their technique, Obstfeld’s assistant, Kyle Murchison, walked around the room with a pool noodle lined with duct tape, attempting to lightly tap them on the head. The seniors raised their forearms to stop the attack.

Among Obstfeld’s students, she said, seniors are her favorite. “I feel like anyone can teach kids,” she said, “but for teaching seniors, the ways you get to interact with them,” she said, are different. Obstfeld continued, “I don’t have to worry if their hand is fully chambered at their hip. I just give them something that they enjoy doing. That’s most rewarding to me.”

In July, Obstfeld went to Israel for the 20th World Maccabiah Games, where she represented the United States on the open karate team in the 18-to-34 age category. “I was the oldest in the division,” she said, adding, “I think I held my own.” She won two silver medals and a bronze. In October, State Assemblyman Brian Curran honored her as a 2017 New York State Assembly Woman of Distinction.

Obstfeld said that she succeeded in spite of training for the Games with a broken thumb and nose, the result of accidents during practice at the dojo. “You keep training,” she said of her injuries. “If you want something, you look past the obstacles.”

As she stood on the podium during the awards ceremony, she rcalled, “Seeing my name up there next to the American flag, I felt like the queen of the world.”

Obstfeld, now 31, got involved in martial arts at 18, during the summer before she started her bachelor’s degree in studio art at Queens College. The local dojo was offering a summer discount, and she said, she and a friend figured, why not?

“When I started,” Obstfeld said, “I was in an all-women class.” By the time she earned a black belt, five years later, her classes contained fewer and fewer women, which, as an Orthodox Jew, posed problems for her. “I don’t initiate contact with men,” she said. “If you reach out to shake my hand, I’ll shake it. I won’t spar with them. I don’t really have partners for drills and things like that.”

After about four years at her preferred dojo in Cedarhurst, her teachers, or sensei, started letting Obstfeld teach parts of the class. She started teaching a few techniques, and then a few more. “[My teacher] started giving me larger and larger chunks of time,” she said, “until she said, ‘OK, I’m going on vacation for a week. The class is yours.’”

“She’s an awesome instructor,” Obstfeld’s assistant of four years, Murchison, 15, said of his sensei. During the lesson at the senior center, he watched Obstfeld with focus, trying to anticipate what she was going to have him do before she asked, and whenever she asked, he responded, “Yes, sensei,” with a quick yet respectful bow.

Murchison said that Obstfeld’s teaching style is “like a performance. She can be very serious and also very funny.

“She’s the nicest person. She’s the most dedicated person I’ve ever seen train,” Murchison continued, adding, “She’s a person you can always go to and talk to. She’s that person, 100 percent.”

Obstfeld said that, “God willing,” when she retires, she wants to be a life coach. “Life is outlook, life is perspective,” she said describing her philosophy.

“You want it,” she continued, “take it.”