Shalom, friends!
The people who go to my synagogue on Saturday mornings are on the older side. Now that the Rabbi has figured out I’m strong enough to do hagbah (lifting the Torah at the end of the Torah service), she’s been calling me up to do it consistently — which I am super excited about.
Everything has gone fine so far, but it’s a bit of a high stakes situation — nobody wants to drop the Torah!! — so I’m looking to do some strength training to help me feel a little more secure and confident when lifting the Torah.
I rock climb so my back, legs, arms, and core are already pretty strong. Where I tend to feel the effort is actually in my pecs. (This kind of makes sense to me — rock climbing is all pulling, not pushing, and I don’t really do much other than climb, so my back is overdeveloped compared to my front.) My naive thought was to just start doing push ups, but I am wondering if anyone who does hagbah has found any particularly useful exercises that they could recommend. Particularly useful would be exercises that might help with improving dexterity and balance since the Torah is sometimes significantly heavier on one side than the other, depending on the time of year.
Thank you!
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