Jews and Boxing

According to a popular story, the boxer Max Baer was in a gym hitting a heavy bag on Yom Kippur.
"What are you doing?" a reporter asked Baer.
"Getting ready to fight Primo Carnera," he said.
"What about Yom Kippur?"
"I'll fight him next!" Baer replied.

Ron Howard's new film Cinderella Man opens tomorrow. With Russell Crowe starring as the boxer James J. Braddock, no doubt everyone's attention will be on the 10-1 underdog who defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight championship of the world in 1935. Here, however, is a little something about the loser. 

From David Fellerath at Slate: How Cinderella Man Sucker Punches the Jewish Boxer Max Baer:

Attentive viewers of the climactic fight of Cinderella Man, Ron Howard's Depression-era crowd-pleaser, will notice a Star of David on the red trunks of Max Baer, the lethal opponent of Jim "Cinderella Man" Braddock.

...It was in 1933, when Baer was 24, that he came out as a Jew and wore the Star of David on his trunks for the first time. His opponent was Max Schmeling, the "Black Uhlan of the Rhine" and a reluctant standard-bearer for Hitler's Third Reich. "That one's for Hitler," Baer snarled between blows to the stumbling Schmeling. He knocked him out in the 10th round. It was his finest hour in the ring.

...Baer's prominent display of the Star of David came at a time of continuous bad tidings from Germany. Anti-Jewish boycotts were under way, Jews were being expelled from official positions, and Dachau had opened for the internment of communists. A day after the Schmeling fight, a Times dispatch from Berlin reported that the German papers were reticent about their countryman's defeat. "All papers ignore the fact that Schmeling was beaten by a man who in Germany would be classified as a Jew," the unnamed Times correspondent wrote. One can only imagine the propaganda uses Joseph Goebbels would have found had Schmeling defeated Baer.

More on Jews and boxing:

When Boxing was a Jewish Sport

Joe Louis and the Jews

History of Jews in Boxing

Comments

[michelle]

Fabulous post!

[David Gerstman]

What about a post on when basketball was a Jewish sport? IIRC, Jackie Berg had his Hebrew initials on his trunks.

[Mikhaelmeir]

Max Baer had a German-Jewish grandfather, but was raised Catholic. Promoters hyped his Jewish connections to make him more popular with Jewish fans.