{"id":1832,"date":"2008-04-03T16:00:05","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro.html"},"modified":"2008-04-03T16:00:05","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T16:00:05","slug":"the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro.html","title":{"rendered":"The Night the Rabbi Went 10 Rounds?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"yuripic.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/yuripic.jpg\" width=\"177\" height=\"214\" style=\"float:right;margin: 5px\">Which is more draining, world-class athletic training or rigorous spiritual and intellectual learning? Ask Yuri Foreman, a fighter who will defend his light middleweight boxing title tonight, and who is studying to become an Orthodox rabbi.<br \/>\nThe 27-year-old was born in Belarus and grew up in Israel, but didn&#8217;t become religious until he met (at Gleason&#8217;s, a famous boxing gym in Brooklyn, N.Y.) and married Leyla Leidecker, a Hungarian amateur fighter and former fashion model who had converted to Judaism herself only two years ago.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nSome rabbis say boxing and devout Judaism don&#8217;t mix, citing Jewish teachings against intentionally harming yourself, much less others. But others say long-term injury isn&#8217;t the point of boxing, only an associated risk. &#8220;Does that mean he can&#8217;t go bungee jumping, or get in a car or a plane,&#8221; asks Rabbi Benjamin Blech in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/03\/sports\/othersports\/03boxing.html?ref=sports\" target=\"_blank\"><i>New York Times<\/i> article<\/a> about Foreman.<br \/>\nAs with many athletes, Foreman&#8217;s biggest challenge is abstaining from boxing on the Sabbath. When he can&#8217;t avoid a Saturday night fight, he remains in walking distance of the arena, so he doesn&#8217;t have to transgress Sabbath restrictions against riding in a vehicle. And he relies on prayer to keep him kosher\u2014literally. When HBO officials called him into the ring for a Saturday evening bout early last summer, Foreman pulled his cornerman aside and said a few prayers until the sun slipped below the horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Which is more draining, world-class athletic training or rigorous spiritual and intellectual learning? Ask Yuri Foreman, a fighter who will defend his light middleweight boxing title tonight, and who is studying to become an Orthodox rabbi. The 27-year-old was born in Belarus and grew up in Israel, but didn&#8217;t become religious until he met (at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Night the Rabbi Went 10 Rounds?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Night the Rabbi Went 10 Rounds?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Which is more draining, world-class athletic training or rigorous spiritual and intellectual learning? Ask Yuri Foreman, a fighter who will defend his light middleweight boxing title tonight, and who is studying to become an Orthodox rabbi. The 27-year-old was born in Belarus and grew up in Israel, but didn&#8217;t become religious until he met (at&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-03T16:00:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/yuripic.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul O&#039;Donnell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Night the Rabbi Went 10 Rounds?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/04\/the-night-the-rabbi-went-10-ro.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Night the Rabbi Went 10 Rounds?","og_description":"Which is more draining, world-class athletic training or rigorous spiritual and intellectual learning? 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