Word association time. Name the first five words that come to your head when you hear the word “Jew.”
Mine: dorky, glasses, chess, honor roll (sorry, that’s two words), Jeremy Moses (also two words)
Demitry Salita is trying to disprove all of those. Well, for all I know, Salita might be a great chess player and he may have been on the honor roll back in high school. But today, he is known for something else.
On Saturday night, at Madison Square Garden, as the undercard for the much hyped Calzaghe-Jones fight, Salita defeated Derrick Campos, to bring his boxing record to a perfect 29-0.
Pretty impressive, especially because Salita is a practicing Orthodox Jew. I’m not the first guy to realize this either. He is the subject of the documentary Orthodox Stance, which won the Best Documentary Award at the 2008 London Jewish Cultural Awards.
Don’t think that Salita is the first Jewish boxer either. Check out this interesting article by Allen Bodner on MJL about the history of Jews in the sport.
