Jewish Boxers

By

Charles Miller


December 1- 29

The notion of Jewish boxers sounds like a contradiction in terms. American Jews in popular view have been portrayed as a people who settle their differences through wit, guile and rhetoric, not violence. But the Jewish warrior goes back as far as biblical times, the Maccabeees and up to the modern, doomed resisters of the Warsaw Ghetto. There was a time when Jews dominated the sport of boxing in numbers greatly exceeding their proportion in the population. From 1900-1945, there were some 20,000 Jewish amateur and professional boxers. Between 1910 and 1940 there were 27 Jewish world-boxing champions.

Their names themselves tell a rich story: “The Ghetto Wizard” (Benny Leonard). “The Jewel of the Ghetto” (Ruby Goldstein). “The Pride of the Ghetto” (Jack Bernstein). “The Fighting Dentist “(Leach Cross). “The Galloping Ghost” (Sid Terris). “The Little Hebrew” (Abe Attell). Al “Bummy” Davis. “Schoolboy” Bernie Friedkin. Yussel “the Muscle”. “Kingfish” Levinsky. These fighters were the sons of the Eastern European immigrants who filled the ghettos of grimy Eastern cities where the competition for hard manual labor was as brutal as the work itself. For a four-round fight (a mere 12 minutes of boxing), a young Jewish boy could earn fifteen dollars, more money than his father did in a week. Initially many fought under Irish or Italian names because to their parents, boxing was a shondeh, a shame, worse than being a gangster. The late Charles Gellman, a veteran boxer of 100 fights, was chased around the ring by his father with a two-by-four after his father saw his son’s face on a barbershop fight poster. It ended well when his father realized that he had been earning money for college. In fact, Charlie went on to an illustrious career as a doctor and founder of hospitals in New York and Israel. 

Beyond their role as boxers, many Jews were participants on the sidelines of American boxing - as managers, trainers, cut men, promoters and journalists. In 1910, a 17-year-old tailor’s son, Jacob Golumb, founded the Everlast Company, a name synonymous with boxing. The Ring magazine was founded by the great Nat Fleischer in 1922. The sweet science itself, what we know today as the modern style of boxing, was invented by a Spanish Jew, Daniel Mendoza, in England in the late 19th century. Mendoza invented a highly sophisticated improvisation of movement, feints and “slips” to counter an opponent’s attack and avoid injury. Countless schools appeared to teach this new “science” and boxing achieved a new respect in the upper reaches of European society, culminating in the Rules of the Marquis of Queensbury and the legitimacy of boxing as a noble art form.

Charles Miller is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings and drawings can be viewed at http://jewishboxers.com/ and Welcome - paintings by Charles E. Miller. He can be contacted at:info@jewishboxers.com