JNS
Dmitriy Salita, a boxer turned promoter, has made an effort to ensure that his career and the Sabbath don’t collide.
On Saturday, Subriel Matías, a 33-year-old Puerto Rican boxer, is scheduled to square off against the 30-year-old Dominican boxer Alberto Puello, who is defending his title, on what Sports Illustrated called “one of the biggest nights in boxing this summer.”
Matías clearly has a very different kind of contract than his promoter Dmitriy Salita, a former boxer who is Jewish, did in the 2000s.
At the U.S. amateur under-19 championships in Gulfport, Miss., in 2000, Salita told Dylan Hernandez, now a Los Angeles Times sports editor, that he wasn’t going to further participate in the match due to Shabbat. The journalist spoke with organizers and helped rearrange the time for the competition. Salita won the match.
After winning the U.S. national under-19 championship in 2000 without boxing on Shabbat, he declined to go to Budapest, where he would have had to fight on Shabbat. He returned for the next annual Golden Gloves tournament in 2001 when organizers made special accommodations for his faith. They rescheduled his final fight to Thursday night, from Friday. He also won that tournament.
That year, he was slated to fight at the Staples Center in Los Angeles but bowed out due to the fast day of Tishah B’Av. Also in 2001, Salita turned professional and signed a contract with Las Vegas-based promoter Bob Arum, who is Jewish, with the clause that none of Salita’s fights would be scheduled on Shabbat or Jewish holidays. (Arum’s stable of fighters has included legends like George Foreman, Larry Holmes and Oscar De La Hoya.)
Salita, 43, told JNS that maintaining Jewish identity was precarious growing up in Odessa, Ukraine, during the Soviet era, but there were still ways to celebrate in secret.
“Every Passover, my father found a way to get matzah. Our neighbors celebrated Easter with colored eggs. I would ask what it all meant, and he’d tell me the story of the Jewish people—the Exodus, slavery and redemption,” he told JNS. “I remember family and neighbors talking about antisemitic incidents in school, at work and in government.”
Salita, who was born Dmitriy Oleksandrovych Lekhtman on April 4, 1982, was the beneficiary of a clerical error, when his birth certificate listed the last name of his mother, Lyudmila Salita, an accountant, rather than his father Aleksandr Lekhtman, an engineer. His parents left the birth certificate unchanged, since Salita was a less Jewish-sounding name and they hoped it would shield him from antisemitism.
In Odessa, Jews weren’t allowed to receive a Jewish education or to be “educated fully, to live Jewish lives,” he told JNS. “Most people connected to Judaism through their support for Israel, following its triumphs and challenges on American shortwave radio.”
During the Iraq War in 1990, Salita recalled listening with his family to short-wave radio—an illegal act itself—hearing of missile strikes on Israel.
His brother, Mikhail, nine years his senior, had experienced the brunt of antisemitic bullying, and Salita faced similar taunts in school, being called a “zhid” (Jew).
“I was kind of a weak 7-year-old. I would get picked on. I would have a tough time keeping up with athletics in school,” he said. “My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to do some athletic activities. My father said, ‘Why don’t you try karate?’ And there was a karate club that was advertised in my school.”
Salita entered tournaments, moved on to kickboxing and won even more tournaments.
In 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, the family joined a wave of Jewish emigration, heading for Flatbush, Brooklyn, where they packed into a one-bedroom apartment. His father worked at a construction job during the day and studied at night. His mother was diagnosed with breast cancer—a challenging time that he said gave him “a deep desire to work hard, discover who I am and strive to be the best I could be.”
“In Brooklyn, I felt my identity wouldn’t limit what I could become, a stark contrast to the Soviet Union,” he told JNS.
Salita arrived in Brooklyn as a 9-year-old, who spoke no English and wore dollar-store clothes. The family lived on welfare and food stamps. He wore off-brand Payless sneakers, as they struggled to adapt to a new language and culture. “Not speaking English made me stand out in a way no kid wants to,” he said.
While his faith never wavered, his formal connection to Judaism and its various organizations “failed to ignite my spark for Judaism,” he told JNS.
Upon seeing religious Jews in New York, he asked himself what it meant to be a Jew, what made Jews distinct and why people hate Jews. He didn’t feel connected to Jewish organizations in town but felt the spiritual pull to get circumcised at age 12.
Early exposure to martial arts laid the groundwork for what would become a lifelong passion for combat sports. At 13, Salita discovered the Starrett City Boxing Club, a gritty gym in the basement of a Brooklyn parking garage.
Lacking running water, air conditioning, bathroom or heat, the club was a meeting point for some of the city’s most talented young fighters. Under the guidance of legendary trainer Jimmy O’Pharrow, Salita honed his skills as “the only white kid on the team.”
Salita’s amateur boxing bouts were distinguished by rapid success.
He won the bronze medal at the U.S. nationals at age 16, silver at 17 and gold at 18. The following year, he won the New York Golden Gloves at 19, receiving the Sugar Ray Robinson Award as the outstanding boxer of the tournament across all weight classes.
But there was one body-blow that hit close to home. A life-changing moment came when his mother’s breast cancer returned, after years of remission. She shared a hospital room at Brooklyn’s Sloan Kettering hospital with a religious Jewish woman.
At one point, the religious woman’s husband struck up a conversation with 14-year-old Salita and gave him and his brother Misha the number to Rabbi Zalman Liberow of Chabad of Flatbush, where they could pray for their mother’s recovery.
Liberow visited the family at the hospital. “I had a lot of questions about being Jewish, and he answered them,” Salita said.
When Salita’s mother died, Liberow arranged the funeral and helped the family say kaddish. Soon, Liberow encouraged Salita to observe Shabbat on occasion.
“There was certain respect and acceptance and love that I felt,” Salita told JNS. “I just felt like my soul sparked up, you know, and it was already after I started boxing. I was very serious about my boxing.”
Career shift
Salita captured multiple titles, including the North American Boxing Association light welterweight championship, the World Boxing Federation junior welterweight world title and international titles from both the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association.
His first professional title came in 2004, and he fought for a world title at Madison Square Garden on HBO, ultimately earning five professional titles. He retired at 31 and transitioned to a new role as a boxing promoter who represents more than 30 fighters, including some of the sport’s brightest stars like two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields.
Shields became the first female boxer to sign a seven-figure contract, a milestone that Salita regards as a turning point for the sport. On July 26, Shields will defend her undisputed heavyweight world title against Lani Daniels in Detroit.
Salita, who is currently a Northwestern Pritzker School of Law student, was inducted into the New York State Boxing Hall of Fame in 2023.
“I started it because I saw that there was a business in it, and some of the better fighters reached out to me,” he told JNS about being a promoter. “I love the sport, and thank God, it’s progressing nicely.”
“But it’s a long, tedious and very unique journey in the boxing business,” he added.
