Proud history of Jewish fighters

EUGENE KAELLIS

Boxing is a demanding, tough, dangerous and, except for superstars, largely unrewarding way to make a living. Even fighters who attain titles see their earnings nibbled away by a coterie of trainers, sparring partners, managers, publicists and the kind of personal indulgences that understandably accompany a punishing profession, rewarding themselves, when they are able, by “living high” to compensate for the punishment that, even as winners, they invariably suffer, rarely setting aside enough money for their necessarily early retirement from the ring. Moreover, all fighters run the risk of brain injuries. Even such a skilful and intelligent boxer as was Mohammed Ali now exhibits evident signs of cerebral dysfunction.

In North America, especially in the period between the wars, boxing was a significant spectator sport. Today, it has been significantly displaced by mixed martial arts.

The sport has traditionally attracted young men from the lower socioeconomic echelons of society: in North America, over time, largely blacks, Jews (before they had significantly entered the middle and upper classes), Irish, Italian and Hispanics. In the early (19th-century) days of boxing, Jews, especially in Britain, where the sport began, and in the United States, were prominent in the ring. For example, Daniel Mendoza, a Sephardi Jew, became a British bare-knuckle boxer of considerable renown.

My father, a decorated American hero of the First World War, evidently courageous and with a magnificent physique, was offered a career in boxing. Wisely, he declined. My son, similarly endowed, was for years an amateur boxer. In the lower-class Brooklyn neighborhood in which I grew up, street brawls, the “training ground” for many boxers, were common occurrences. Even schoolchildren (exclusively boys) often engaged in fisticuffs.

Small, slight, unaggressive and, moreover, uninterested, I managed to avoid fighting by a largely effective stratagem. By helping the biggest, toughest kid in the class with his homework, I got, in return, his promise to step in effectively to abort any fight in which I was about to be “engaged,” invariably precipitated by someone else. He did so under the (quite transparent) guise of “maintaining the peace,” summarily stepping in and aborting the fight before it had even begun, while I “objected” and feigned eagerness in order to maintain my flagging reputation. Once, my histrionics were so convincing that they overcame his understanding of our arrangement and, after he had stopped restraining me and my presumptive opponent, I was promptly pummeled to the ground. We had to renegotiate our agreement, this time making it more explicit and binding.

In the world of professional boxing, however, large amounts of money were involved and “enterprise” might be a more appropriate description than “sport.” Like all professional sports, it involved major gambling, with bookies operating (illegally) in every neighborhood corner store in New York City, in easy reach of public telephones so they could take bets and get the odds from a (perhaps fabled) “syndicate” in New Jersey. Losers who failed to honor their debts were, Rocky style, given five broken fingers’ worth of a reminder. If that proved ineffective, they were simply killed (as was one young man on my block), a necessary stratagem when there was no legally enforceable contract.

Going back to the beginning of prize fighting, there have been almost a hundred Jewish professional fighters of note and a few even wore a Magen David embroidered on their trunks, providing them instantly with a loyal fan base. (Italian and Irish boxers often made the sign of the cross on their chests, somehow invoking Jesus to assist them and simultaneously winning the support of fellow Catholics.)

Max Baer, a Jewish heavyweight, beat the gigantic Primo Carnera in 1934 to become champion. Max’s brother, Buddy, over six-and-a-half feet tall, also had a significant career in the ring. Al “Bummy” Davis, a Jewish middleweight, was our (Brownsville, Brooklyn) neighborhood hero. Long associated with underworld figures, he, nonetheless, died a hero’s death, shot down when he tried to intervene in the armed robbery of a neighborhood saloon he frequented. Many kids “played hooky” to attend his funeral, which drew fans, fellow boxers, bookies and mobsters. As Jews left the big city ghettoes for suburbia or joined the entrepreneurial and promotional aspect of the sport, Jewish boxers were replaced by African Americans, Irish, Italians and, more recently, Hispanics.

Perhaps the two most important fights for Jews did not involve them directly, but took on a paramount significance. The first featured Joe Louis (“the Brown Bomber,” from Detroit) vs. Max Schmelling (from Nazi Germany), a match that, in 1936, became instantly politicized. Never a Nazi, Schmelling had actually helped Jews during Kristallnacht, but he was encouraged by Hitler, who saw the match as a contest between an Aryan Übermesnch versus a black African Untermensch.

Before thousands in New York’s Yankee Stadium and millions (including my family and friends) listening attentively on the radio, Schmelling knocked out Louis in the 12th round of a scheduled 15-round fight. Hitler, the Nazis and American white supremacists celebrated wildly. But, in a re-match two years later, which we again heard raptly on the radio, Louis was “pumped.” It took him only a little less than two minutes in the first round to finish Schmelling decisively by a TKO (technical knockout, when the loser, even if minimally conscious but still upright, is simply unable to continue the fight). Nazi Germany, and especially Hitler, was plunged into disappointment and gloom, while most Americans, especially blacks and Jews, were ecstatic.

Women have now entered professional boxing, raising the concern that, anatomically they may be more vulnerable in some respects, with, for example, blows to the breast notorious for initiating cysts that have made it more difficult to detect cancers. Nonetheless, boxing, both for men and women (separately), is now an official Olympic sport.

Psychologists, in a debate paralleling views on TV violence of all kinds, especially in “children’s programs” (think of the Tom and Jerry cartoons) differ among themselves about the effects of viewing sports violence, believing either that it excites and augments aggression already incipiently present in one’s psyche, or it sublimates it by vicarious “acting out,” acting as catharsis. Boxing has even been labeled an atavism, harkening back to the gladiatorial contests of the Roman Coliseum, which evidently did not exert a pacific influence on their spectators. The proponents of boxing also claim that it promotes fitness, sportsmanship and courage.

For more than 20 years, Israel has had a boxing organization, part of the European Boxing Union, and now has about 1,800 members, almost all amateurs. In 1997, Roman Greenberg, one of its members, at the age of 15, won a silver medal. Another prominent member is Abdul Ranney. Some members, as young as 11 years of age, fight boxers, including those from Palestinian towns and villages. Again, whether this promotes antagonisms or is a relatively harmless way of engaging disputants, perhaps channeling emotions that might otherwise fuel an intifada, for example, is, of course, debatable.

Eugene Kaellis has written Making Jews, on the theme of the current basic problem of Diaspora Jewry, which is available from lulu.com.

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