Yuri Foreman has been working toward becoming a rabbi and a boxing champion and is closing in on both targets.
The 28-year-old, a native Belarusian and Brooklynite by way of Israel, is a year and a half from earning a degree in rabbinical studies and one fight away from his childhood dream of winning a world title.
Tomorrow, Foreman (27-0) meets US fighter Cornelius Bundrage (29-4) in an International Boxing Federation light middleweight eliminator in Atlantic City, with the winner getting a title shot against Cory Spinks.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“I started as a kid back in Belarus in the former Soviet Union,” Foreman said in an interview near Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. “I took it up to learn self defense because I had been bullied a couple of times.”
He was 11 when his parents emigrated to Israel looking for a better life and four years later he resumed boxing.
“I have wanted to be world champion since 15. Now I’m coming very close and the next one is one step from my dream,” Foreman said.
The desire to delve into Judaism came much later.
Foreman said he was not raised to be religious and his family’s move to Israel was for economic reasons.
“My parents are completely secular, to the bone. They moved to Israel for no Jewish reason,” he said.
“I started to get interested in Judaism when I got here,” he said about leaving Haifa for New York after he had won three national titles and exhausted his boxing opportunities.
“Trying for the first time to make a living, turning professional and seeing how you can be screwed, I needed some kind of spiritual support in order to stand and get more bravery,” he said.
Foreman and his wife, filmmaker, model and former boxer Leyla Leidecker, began to explore Judaism.
“For the first time I started experiencing Judaism. Even though I lived in Israel for eight years, I didn’t know what Yom Kippur meant,” he said about the Jewish holy day.
“Two-and-a-half years ago my rabbi offered me to sign up for rabbinical program and this is how I started. The yeshiva [school] is two blocks from Gleason’s Gym where I train. So in the morning I would go there for about two hours and study,” he said.
Foreman now has rabbinical dreams following completion of his studies at Iyyun yeshiva of the Chabad (Hebrew acronym for wisdom, knowledge and understanding) Hasidic sect.
“Perhaps I can have my own congregation and bring Russian Jews closer to Judaism,” Foreman said. “In Israel it might be interesting. Israel to me is like a holy land and I definitely like to have my base there.”
Foreman, a slick boxer who relies on technique rather than punching power, can hardly believe his own journey.
“When I saw recently I was the World Boxing Association No. 1 contender, I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, that’s crazy,’” he said.
“But after so much work and so much sweat and blood I deserve it,” Foreman said.
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