Fighting for belonging: A Jewish boxer's extraordinary journey through poverty, faith, and tragedy

When the Israeli national anthem rang out across Yankee Stadium on June 5, 2010, Yuri Foreman stood in the ring preparing to defend his world boxing championship against one of the most accomplished fighters of his generation, Puerto Rico’s Miguel Cotto.

More than 20,000 spectators had gathered at the famous New York venue, including a sizable contingent of Israeli and Jewish supporters who had come to cheer on the man who, seven months earlier, had become the first Israeli to win a major professional boxing world title.

For Foreman, however, the occasion carried a significance that went considerably beyond the championship belt he had won in Las Vegas the previous November.

Born in the Soviet Union, raised in Israel and having spent much of his adult life in New York, the boxer, whose achievements had made him a source of national pride, had never been entirely comfortable with the idea of being an Israeli sporting hero.

“I felt almost like a second-class citizen from ’91 to ’99 in Israel,” Foreman told the Magazine in an extensive interview marking his induction into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s class of 2026. “I never felt like I was at home.”

Foreman arrived in Israel as a 10-year-old immigrant from Belarus, unable to speak Hebrew. He struggled to adjust to a country where his parents worked long hours cleaning offices, and where he frequently found himself fighting other children at school.

His mother died when he was a teenager, and by the time he left Israel for the United States in 1999, his experience of the Jewish state had been marked as much by hardship and alienation as by any sense of belonging.

Yet, standing in Yankee Stadium more than a decade later, with the national anthem playing before thousands of spectators, he experienced something that seemed to alter his understanding of what he represented.

“When ‘Hatikvah’ was playing in Yankee Stadium, I felt like I represented the whole planet,” he said.

Foreman, now 46, was among the athletes honored on October 25 as part of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame’s class of 2026, joining a distinguished collection of Jewish sporting figures that includes former NFL star Julian Edelman, Israeli basketball player Omri Casspi, and basketball legend Nancy Lieberman.

The recognition follows a professional career that produced 35 victories, a World Boxing Association super welterweight championship, and a place in Israeli sporting history.

For those familiar with his career, Foreman is perhaps best remembered as the observant Jewish boxer who studied for the rabbinate while preparing for world championship fights, or as the unfortunate champion whose title defense against Cotto ended after a serious knee injury.

His life, however, offers a considerably richer story, beginning in a Soviet city far removed from the bright lights of Las Vegas and New York.

An unlikely beginning

Born in Gomel, in what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, on August 5, 1980, Foreman grew up during the final years of the Soviet Union, when Jewish religious life remained heavily restricted, and the prospect of building a future elsewhere was becoming increasingly attractive to many families.

His introduction to boxing came at the age of seven, following an encounter with older boys at a swimming pool that prompted his parents to enroll him in lessons so that he could defend himself.

Like countless aspiring boxers of his generation, he grew up watching Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns, while the films of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa made an equally powerful impression.

Indeed, Foreman believes the fictional Italian-American underdog may have done more to inspire young boys to take up boxing than many of the sport’s greatest real-life champions.

“I know me and my friends were obsessed. We believed in this underdog story,” he said, acknowledging with amusement that the comparison might sound ridiculous to those who regard Ali as the sport’s most influential figure. “I wanted to be a world champion since I was eight.”

In 1991, his family joined the enormous wave of Jewish emigration from the collapsing Soviet Union, settling in Haifa at a time when hundreds of thousands of new arrivals were attempting to establish themselves in a country whose language, customs, and economic conditions were frequently unfamiliar.

For the young Foreman, the difficulties began almost immediately. On his first day at school, another boy approached him and began speaking aggressively in Hebrew. Unable to understand the words, Foreman asked a Russian-speaking classmate to translate, only to discover that the child had insulted his mother.

“That was my first fight,” he told the Magazine, explaining that similar confrontations became a regular feature of his school years, when his limited Hebrew and immigrant background made him an easy target.

At home, the family’s financial circumstances were equally difficult. Both parents worked cleaning offices, often late into the evening, and Foreman would regularly travel to their workplaces after school to help them finish the day’s work.

“My parents cleaned offices the first two years living in Israel,” he said. “After finishing class, I’d come home from school, have lunch real quick, and then take the bus to the office building where my parents worked.”

Most of his friends were other Russian-speaking children whose families were experiencing similar difficulties, while boxing gradually provided an outlet for the frustrations of his school years. Training sessions increased from three times a week to five, and eventually to almost every day, as the sport became an increasingly important part of his life.

The greatest personal tragedy of his youth came in 1998, when his mother died. Foreman was just 17, and he believes she never fully adjusted to life in Israel, struggling with the loss of her previous surroundings and the pressures that accompanied immigration.

“She always wanted to go back to Russia, Belarus,” he said.

Although boxing offered an escape from some of those difficulties, Foreman now views his childhood experiences as an education in how people respond to circumstances over which they have little control.

“Life teaches you lessons,” he said. “Either this event is going to destroy you, or you’re going to use that event as a lesson.”

By his late teens, Foreman had already won Israeli amateur boxing titles and was considering the possibility of turning professional, but Israel offered limited opportunities for a young fighter hoping to reach the highest levels of the sport.

Having already experienced one difficult immigration, he decided to undertake another, leaving for New York in 1999 in pursuit of the world championship he had dreamed about since childhood.

Brooklyn and the American dream

New York had long been one of the great centers of professional boxing, with generations of immigrant fighters establishing their reputations in the city’s gyms and arenas.

Foreman arrived with little money and began working in Manhattan’s garment district while training at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, following a routine that demanded considerable physical endurance even before he entered the ring.

After finishing work, he would run across the Brooklyn Bridge to reach the gym, spending as much as 40 minutes making the journey before beginning the training sessions that he hoped would eventually lead to a professional career.

He speaks about those years with an appreciation of the opportunities America offered, although he is distinctly unimpressed by contemporary notions of success that appear to promise fame and wealth without the years of work required to achieve either.

“That’s what the American dream is,” he said. “You do first the work, and then you talk. Better not to talk. Let the work explain all your words.”

Foreman won the New York Golden Gloves amateur championship in 2001 and turned professional the following year, gradually establishing himself as a technically accomplished boxer whose height, quick hands, and footwork made him a difficult opponent in the 154-pound division. He was never a particularly powerful puncher, relying instead on movement, timing, and an understanding of distance that allowed him to win rounds without becoming unnecessarily involved in exchanges.

As his unbeaten record grew, he attracted the attention of some of boxing’s more influential figures, including Maury Wilson, a veteran New York manager whose connections extended across the city’s boxing community, and who developed a close personal relationship with the young immigrant fighter.

“He was a father figure,” Foreman said of Wilson, whose death in 2010 would have a considerable effect on his career.

Wilson’s connections eventually brought Foreman into contact with Bob Arum, the veteran promoter whose Top Rank organization had spent decades working with some of boxing’s greatest names, including Ali, Hagler, Duran, Leonard, and Oscar De La Hoya.

For a young fighter who had grown up watching those men on television, joining Top Rank represented a significant step toward the ambitions that had brought him to America. Foreman was immediately impressed by the professionalism of an organization that had been promoting major championship contests since before he was born.

“You could see the high level of professionalism,” he said. “Everything was very organized, super professional.”

Arum, who will turn 95 in December, also had a particular ambition involving his newest Jewish fighter. Despite having promoted numerous world champions throughout his long career, he told Foreman that he had never guided a Jewish boxer to a world championship and hoped that he might finally achieve that goal.

“Bob Arum did mention that he made a lot of world champions,” Foreman said, “but he hadn’t had a Jewish world champion yet, and that would be, for him, one of his dreams come true.

“I said, I’ll do my best to help you with that pursuit of yours. It came true. My pursuit aligned with yours.”

Although his religious identity would eventually become a prominent feature of his public image, Foreman insists that Top Rank did not encourage him to manufacture a Jewish persona for publicity or to make his Israeli background the centerpiece of a promotional campaign.

Asked whether the organization had tried to capitalize on those elements of his life, he stressed that the relationship began entirely on sporting grounds.

“It was purely sports,” he said.

By then, however, his relationship with Judaism had undergone considerable changes from the largely secular upbringing he had experienced in the Soviet Union and Israel. In Brooklyn, Foreman began attending religious classes and studying Jewish texts, finding that the discipline demanded by religious study complemented the routines he had already developed through boxing.

His growing observance attracted attention from the American media, particularly as his professional career advanced, with the prospect of a rabbinical student competing for a major boxing championship providing an unusual combination of two worlds that many outsiders regarded as incompatible.

Foreman saw little contradiction between them. Both pursuits required discipline, patience, and a willingness to confront difficult questions, while his experiences as an immigrant also influenced his interpretation of the religious teachings he encountered.

One biblical passage that has particular meaning for him is “Lech lecha,” God’s command to Abraham to leave his country, birthplace, and father’s house and travel to an unfamiliar land. The comparison with his own experiences of immigration was obvious, and Foreman sees in the passage a lesson about the importance of leaving behind familiar surroundings when pursuing a greater ambition.

He was eventually ordained as a rabbi in 2014, although his approach to religious questions remains refreshingly informal.

“I don’t think God is a boxing fan,” he joked during the interview, before discussing his belief that dedication to a particular calling can provide its own form of spiritual education, often through experiences considerably more difficult than those a person might have chosen for himself.

Becoming a world champion

By the late 2000s, Foreman had established himself among the leading contenders in the super welterweight division, building an unbeaten record through victories over increasingly accomplished opponents.

An important opportunity appeared to have slipped away in November 2008 when a contest against fellow contender Cornelius Bundrage ended prematurely after an accidental clash of heads opened a serious cut near Foreman’s eye, leaving him unable to see properly and resulting in a no-contest decision.

He returned to the dressing room bitterly disappointed, only to receive unexpected news from his management team. Through Top Rank, an opportunity to challenge Daniel Santos, the experienced Puerto Rican who held the World Boxing Association’s super welterweight title, had emerged.

For a man who had begun boxing as a seven-year-old in the Soviet Union, the news brought together years of experiences stretching across three countries, from watching Rocky films with childhood friends to the long evenings helping his parents clean offices in Haifa and the exhausting runs across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The prospect of becoming a world champion had always seemed remote, even as his performances steadily improved. Now, for the first time, he had the opportunity to make it a reality.

On November 14, 2009, Foreman entered the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas to challenge Santos on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao’s eagerly anticipated showdown with Cotto.

Santos was a powerful and experienced champion, but Foreman’s movement and technical ability proved too much for him over the 12-round contest. The Israeli established control during the early stages, scored knockdowns in the second and final rounds, and repeatedly frustrated his opponent through disciplined footwork and well-timed combinations.

The judges awarded Foreman a unanimous decision, making him the first Israeli boxer to capture a major professional world title.

The victory was celebrated in Israel and among Jewish communities abroad, with considerable attention focused on the unusual background of the new champion, a religious Jew studying for the rabbinate who had reached the pinnacle of a profession rarely associated with contemporary Jewish sporting success.

There was a historical dimension to the achievement, too. During the early decades of the 20th century, Jewish fighters had occupied a prominent place in American boxing, with champions such as Benny Leonard and Barney Ross emerging from immigrant communities in New York and becoming major sporting personalities. Foreman’s triumph offered a modern addition to that tradition, while also fulfilling the ambition Arum had expressed when they first began working together.

Within seven months, however, he would be facing one of the most accomplished fighters in boxing, in a contest whose circumstances would remain a source of disappointment long after his championship reign had ended.

The fight that got away

The decision to stage Foreman’s first championship defense against Cotto at Yankee Stadium on June 5, 2010, ensured that the contest would attract an audience far beyond those who ordinarily followed the super welterweight division.

Cotto was already a multiple-weight world champion and one of Puerto Rico’s most popular sporting figures, having shared the ring with some of the greatest fighters of his generation.

For Foreman, the occasion represented both the largest stage of his career and an opportunity to establish himself as a champion capable of competing with the sport’s elite.

As the fight progressed, Cotto’s experience and pressure began to tell. Foreman struggled to establish the rhythm that had served him so effectively against Santos, while the Puerto Rican increasingly controlled the exchanges through his jab and ability to cut off the ring.

Then, in the seventh round, Foreman’s right knee gave way.

He had experienced problems with the knee before, but the sudden collapse left him struggling to maintain the movement on which his boxing style depended. He fell again while attempting to continue, visibly limping as Cotto pressed his advantage.

During the eighth round, Foreman’s corner threw a towel into the ring in an attempt to stop the contest, but referee Arthur Mercante Jr. controversially allowed the fight to continue after Foreman insisted that he wanted to carry on.

Cotto eventually stopped him in the ninth round, ending his championship reign and inflicting the first defeat of his professional career.

The refereeing prompted considerable criticism, with observers questioning why a badly injured boxer had been permitted to continue against such a dangerous opponent. Foreman himself remains adamant that he did not want the fight to end under those circumstances.

“I remember actually thinking maybe I’m going to win on a lucky punch,” he told the Magazine, describing one of the thoughts that passed through his mind as he tried to continue despite the injury. He recognized almost immediately, however, that defeating someone of Cotto’s ability required full use of both hands and legs, particularly for a fighter whose success depended so heavily on movement.

“I would always choose an ugly win rather than a beautiful loss,” he said.

Foreman has never watched the entire fight back, although he bears little apparent resentment toward those involved, including Mercante, whose decision to permit the contest to continue attracted considerable criticism.

Foreman had known the referee’s father, Arthur Mercante Sr., one of boxing’s most respected officials, and spoke warmly about their encounters during the early years of his career. When he met Mercante Jr. again at a New York Boxing Hall of Fame event, he took the opportunity to explain how much he had admired his father and made clear that there were no hard feelings.

The defeat was followed by knee surgery and a return to competition that Foreman now believes came too soon.

“I should have taken a whole year off from boxing,” he said. “Instead, I took six months.”

His attempts to regain his position among the sport’s leading fighters were further complicated by the death of Wilson, whose guidance had been so important during the most successful years of his career, while changes in his training arrangements left him struggling to recover his previous form.

A defeat against Pawel Wolak in 2011 was followed by a period away from the ring, although Foreman later returned and compiled a succession of victories that eventually brought him another championship opportunity against Cuban star Erislandy Lara in January 2017.

Lara stopped him in the fourth round, and although Foreman subsequently fought twice more, his career ended in June 2021 with a professional record of 35 victories, four defeats and one no contest.

Looking back, Foreman is keenly aware of the physical and emotional price that accompanies a career in boxing, particularly at a level where the difference between victory and defeat can determine whether a fighter continues earning significant money or struggles to find another opportunity.

“Boxing is one of the most cruel sports in the world,” he said, drawing a distinction between his affection for the sport and the often unforgiving commercial environment in which professional fighters operate.

That distinction also shapes his assessment of Arum, for whom he retains considerable personal affection while recognizing that the interests of a promoter and those of an individual boxer do not always coincide.

“Remember, Top Rank and Bob Arum are almost two different entities,” he explained. “There is a personality, and there is a business.”

Foreman is also concerned about the long-term physical consequences of boxing, arguing that trainers and managers assume enormous responsibilities when preparing fighters for competition, particularly when serious injuries can have consequences that remain long after a career has ended.

“A coach, for example – you’re gambling someone’s life and someone’s health,” he said.

He has little patience for the modern fascination with social media personalities promising to teach people how to box through short videos and Internet shortcuts, contrasting them with the old-school trainers and matchmakers whose knowledge was accumulated through decades of working with professional fighters.

Among those he remembers with particular affection is Johnny Bos, an eccentric veteran matchmaker whose extraordinary memory for fighters and their strengths and weaknesses made him a valuable figure during Foreman’s professional career.

Bos, a physically imposing character with long hair and an appearance that Foreman likened to Hulk Hogan, kept unconventional hours and frequently telephoned fighters in the middle of the night with information about prospective opponents.

On one occasion, he arranged a contest against a much larger man and assured Foreman that his opponent’s attempts to make weight would leave him exhausted after the opening rounds. Foreman was initially alarmed by the size of the man he was being asked to face, but Bos’s prediction proved remarkably accurate.

“That’s exactly what happened,” he said.

For Foreman, such men represented a boxing culture in which knowledge was acquired through experience, observation, and an understanding of the dangers involved, qualities he believes are increasingly overlooked in a sport where mistakes can have permanent consequences.

Loss and perspective

The physical and professional disappointments of boxing have been accompanied by personal tragedies, most recently the death of Foreman’s father in a workplace accident in Israel.

The two had remained close despite living in different countries, speaking by telephone or exchanging messages almost every day, and Foreman described the brief morning calls that had become a familiar part of their relationship.

His father, who had worked physically demanding jobs throughout his life, would frequently telephone early in the morning, sometimes speaking for only 30 seconds before wishing his son a good day and telling him that he loved him. They had spoken shortly before the accident, which came as an enormous shock to Foreman and his family.

Despite the suddenness of the loss, Foreman does not believe that anger over something beyond his control would serve much purpose. Reflecting on Jewish mourning practices, particularly the tradition of sitting shiva, he spoke about the importance of allowing oneself to grieve while ultimately accepting the responsibility to continue living.

“You can be pissed, you can be angry, you can cry,” he said. “But after seven days, you get up.”

His response reflects an outlook influenced by his religious beliefs and the difficult experiences that have accompanied him since childhood, from the death of his mother in Israel to the injuries and disappointments of his boxing career. Foreman does not regard those experiences as equivalent, but believes that accepting what cannot be changed is an important part of moving forward.

A Jewish champion

Foreman’s induction into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame places him alongside athletes from numerous countries and sporting disciplines whose achievements have brought distinction to Jewish communities around the world.

His career also recalls an earlier generation of Jewish boxers who emerged from the immigrant neighborhoods of New York during the first half of the 20th century, when the sport provided a means of escaping poverty and establishing a place in American society.

Foreman’s journey followed a similar path, although his relationship with Israel adds a particular dimension to a story that began in the Soviet Union and developed through two very different experiences of immigration.

During our conversation, he spoke about a recent visit to Israel with his wife, who was seeing the country for the first time, while he himself was returning after an absence of approximately 25 years.

“It was a very, very cool trip,” he said.

Although the difficulties of his childhood remain part of his understanding of Israel, his comments also reveal a broader sense of connection to the Jewish people, particularly when discussing the responsibilities Jews have toward one another.

He referred to the idea of mishpaha, the Hebrew word for family, explaining that differences of opinion and personal disagreements do not erase the obligation to stand together when members of that family are threatened.

It is a perspective that reflects the considerable changes in his understanding of Jewish identity since he first arrived in Brooklyn more than a quarter of a century ago, having left Israel with complicated feelings about the country and his place within it.

When asked about the possibility of another Israeli boxer following in his footsteps, Foreman returned to the biblical passage of “Lech lecha,” which he interprets as a lesson about the need to leave familiar surroundings when pursuing something greater.

He believes that a future Israeli world champion will almost certainly have to leave home, embrace the difficulties of life in another country, and spend years developing skills that cannot be acquired through shortcuts.

Foreman followed precisely that course himself. When he left Israel for New York in 1999, he was a young immigrant whose childhood had been marked by financial hardship, discrimination, and the loss of his mother, but who remained determined to pursue an ambition that had seemed almost impossibly distant when he first entered a boxing gym in the Soviet Union.

Within a decade, he had become a world champion, representing a country in which he had once struggled to feel accepted and establishing a place in the long history of Jewish boxing.

His induction into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame recognizes those achievements and a career that took him from the boxing gyms of Belarus and Haifa to the biggest stages in Las Vegas and New York. ■