Mike Sil­ver is a box­ing his­to­ri­an whose sec­ond book, Stars in the Ring: Jew­ish Cham­pi­ons in the Gold­en Age of Box­ing: A Pho­to­graph­ic His­to­ry, comes out this week. Mike is guest blog­ging for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil all week as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe series here on The ProsenPeo­ple.

In writ­ing my sec­ond book, Stars in the Ring: Jew­ish Cham­pi­ons in the Gold­en Age of Box­ing: A Pho­to­graph­ic His­to­ry, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­bine two of my pas­sions: box­ing and Judaism. A strange com­bi­na­tion, you say? Well, not really.

It would sur­prise most peo­ple to learn that more Jew­ish ath­letes have com­pet­ed as box­ers (esti­mates are in the low thou­sands) than all oth­er pro­fes­sion­al sports com­bined. In fact, dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, gold­en age for the sport, Jew­ish box­ers, pro­mot­ers, train­ers, gym own­ers, mag­a­zine pub­lish­ers, and equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers were all major play­ers. In the same way they helped to cre­ate and devel­op the enter­tain­ment and gar­ment indus­tries, Jews in the box­ing world — both in and out­side of the ring — set stan­dards for the sport as an art, sci­ence, and business. 

Up until the mid­cen­tu­ry, box­ing was a major spec­ta­tor sport, rival­ing base­ball in pop­u­lar­i­ty. Jew­ish cham­pi­ons such as Ben­ny Leonard, Al Singer Jack­ie Kid” Berg, and Bar­ney Ross were ele­vat­ed to hero sta­tus in poor urban com­mu­ni­ties. They were looked up to and admired by a gen­er­a­tion of immi­grants, and their chil­dren and were a source of inspi­ra­tion, pride, and hope to a pop­u­la­tion strug­gling to break free of pover­ty and enter the main­stream. It is one of the most unique and col­or­ful chap­ters of the Jew­ish immi­grant expe­ri­ence in America. 

Between 1901 and 1939, just under thir­ty Jew­ish box­ers were rec­og­nized as world cham­pi­ons, and over 160 were ranked among the top ten title chal­lengers in their respec­tive weight divi­sions. By 1928 Jew­ish box­ers com­prised the largest eth­nic group among title con­tenders in the ten weight divi­sions. In fact, the most famous Jew­ish per­son in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1920s was the peer­less light­weight cham­pi­on of the world, Ben­ny Leonard. One would think this his­to­ry would be wide­ly known, at least among the Jew­ish peo­ple. But the real­i­ty, as I found out, is quite different. 

Before, dur­ing, and after writ­ing my book, I would go around ask­ing peo­ple to name a Jew­ish box­ing cham­pi­on. Most often the response (espe­cial­ly from peo­ple under 40) was a blank stare, or some­times even laugh­ter. When told there were a total of 34 Jew­ish world cham­pi­ons, the reac­tion was usu­al­ly a com­bi­na­tion of sur­prise, curios­i­ty, and con­fu­sion — as if there was some­thing just too incon­gru­ous in putting the words Jew­ish and box­ing together. 

I found it very frus­trat­ing that this rich his­to­ry appeared to be all but for­got­ten. It was that reac­tion and lack of knowl­edge that I hoped my book would change. I real­ized that the sto­ry deserved an epic retelling to fill that gap and reclaim the his­tor­i­cal lega­cy these amaz­ing ath­letes and per­son­al­i­ties deserved. My goal was to accom­plish this with a rich­ly illus­trat­ed cof­fee table” book that would be infor­ma­tive, enter­tain­ing and ency­clo­pe­dic. I want­ed to make this remark­able sto­ry come alive and be avail­able to a much larg­er audi­ence by redis­cov­er­ing a sig­nif­i­cant aspect of Jew­ish his­to­ry — a his­to­ry that should be a source of pride for the Jew­ish peo­ple, and a source of infor­ma­tion for the gen­er­al pub­lic as well — espe­cial­ly those who have accept­ed Jew­ish stereotypes.

It was also very impor­tant to me to put the sto­ries of the 166 box­ers I pro­file in his­tor­i­cal con­text, which is why I include intro­duc­to­ry chap­ters and side­bars that explain what was hap­pen­ing not just in the box­ing world, but amid the greater soci­ety in which the sport func­tioned. As the book took form I real­ized it was becom­ing not just a box­ing book, but a valu­able doc­u­ment focus­ing on a neglect­ed but sig­nif­i­cant aspect of Jew­ish history. 

The book took about three years to com­plete. After fin­ish­ing my first book, The Arc of Box­ing: The Rise and Decline of the Sweet Sci­ence, I thought I would nev­er write anoth­er book, because the effort was far more dif­fi­cult than I had imag­ined. Nev­er­the­less, I start­ed on my sec­ond book soon after, and it turned into a labor of love. Even though I have researched and writ­ten about box­ing for almost 40 years, I dis­cov­ered so much that I did not know. 

From the begin­ning I felt my sto­ry about the Jew­ish box­ers of the Gold­en Age was very per­son­al. I owed it to these men, who gave us so much to be proud of, to pro­duce a qual­i­ty prod­uct that would make them proud. Their praise for the book is the most grat­i­fy­ing part of this whole venture. 

Mike Sil­vers work has appeared in The New York Times, Ring mag­a­zine, Box­ing Month­ly, and else­where. He has served as an his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant for 19 doc­u­men­taries and cura­tor for the 2004 exhib­it Sting Like a Mac­cabee: The Gold­en Age of the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Box­er” at the Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can Jew­ish History.

Relat­ed Content:

Mike Sil­ver is an inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed box­ing his­to­ri­an and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Ring mag­a­zine, Box­ing Month­ly and var­i­ous web sites. He was his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant for nine­teen doc­u­men­taries and cura­tor for the 2004 exhib­it Sting Like a Mac­cabee: The Gold­en Age of the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Box­er” at the Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can Jew­ish History.