By COLlive reporter
Legendary boxing promoter Bob Arum was recently seen walking the streets of the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn with a filming crew and a group of rabbis.
He wasn’t scouting to sign up new talent for Top Rank, the professional boxing promotion company he founded and manages in Las Vegas.
Rather, the crew from the HBO network was following Arum on a tour of his childhood upbringing. Accompanying him was Rabbi Shea Harlig, a fellow Brooklyn native and Director of Chabad of Southern Nevada.
Arum is a good friend of Rabbi Harlig and a supporter of Chabad of Southern Nevada, and the two previously took a trip to Crown Heights – home to a bustling Jewish community – for a visit to Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
On that trip 15 years ago, Arum was recognized by resident Yisroel Liberow, brother of Rabbi Zalman Liberow of Chabad-House of Flatbush, who has been a spiritual mentor for Ukrainian-born professional boxer and world title challenger Dmitriy Salita. The two contacted Rabbi Harlig later and asked him to connect Salita with the renowned promoter.
Arum added Salita to his roster, as well as another Orthodox Jewish professional boxer and former WBA super welterweight champion, Yuri Foreman. In his career, Arum promoted boxing greats such as Muhammad Ali, Oscar De La Hoya, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, and dominated the sport with notable superfights including last year’s Mayweather vs Pacquiao match, billed as The Fight of the Century.
As a boy growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home, Arum remembers life in Crown Heights and visiting the Rabbi Jacob J. Reines Shul at 417 Troy Avenue. With its original building still standing, it now serves as a synagogue and the Oholei Torah Mesivta high school.
Arum addressed the Oholei Torah Mesivta bochurim in the building’s Shul, telling them he stood in that exact spot about 70 years earlier, giving his Bar Mitzvah speech. He told them how important it is for them to continue their education, so when they are older they can become Chabad Rabbis helping Jewish people around the world.
He then showed the camera crew a room where a smaller secondary Shul used to be. “My grandfather was the Chazan there,” he proudly noted.
Rabbi Harlig and his sons accompanied Arum to his childhood home at 914 Montgomery Street. His parents’ home was since converted into 2 apartments. A young Jewish couple living there now welcomed him to tour it.
Growing up, Arum had little interest in boxing. Instead, he attended Erasmus Hall High School, New York University, and Harvard Law School. This led him to work as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.
It has been 50 years since Arum became a boxing promoter, and HBO felt his upbringing in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn was crucial to a documentary film about his life. He asked Rabbi Harlig to join him on the tour of his roots.
“He hadn’t been back to these places in 60 years,” Rabbi Harlig told COLlive.com. “He seemed very touched by the emotional look back, he has good memories of his childhood here.”
Arum clearly remembers going to 770 for the joyous Simchas Torah dancing in the 1940s. He also recalled Lubavitchers in the neighborhood rounding up children with the help of treats to a Mesibas Shabbos party of prayer and stories.
For downtime, Arum would go to the once famous Brooklyn Jewish Center, located at 667 Eastern Parkway, to play in the gym and swim in its pool. Today it exists as the Educational Institute Oholei Torah.
Welcoming Arum at Oholei Torah was its director of development Rabbi Nosson Blumes. He showed Arum an old newsletter of the community center where his parents’ membership – name and address – were listed.
Touring the new Popack Recreational Facility, Arum was impressed with the school’s newly refurbished pool and gym, and enjoyed seeing the hundreds of children happily playing.
Despite his many accomplishments and success in the boxing arena, Arum was visibly moved by the visit, showing a genuine longing and warmth to his childhood days in Brooklyn.
Boxing promoter? Big deal. That he was touched by his childhood memories is so much more meaningful.
Hopefully I his golden years he will make his zeidy, the chazan, proud.
aryeh goodman! nice stuff
The real deal!!
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