Barney Ross, born Dov-Ber Rasofsky (December 23, 1909–January 17, 1967) was a boxer.
Dov-Ber (or Beryl) Rasofsky was born in New York City to Isidore "Itchik" Rasofsky and Sarah Epstein Rasofsky. His father was a Talmudic scholar who had emigrated to America from his native Brest-Litovsk after barely surviving a pogrom. The family then moved from New York to Chicago. Isidore became a rabbi and owner of a small vegetable shop in Chicago's Maxwell ...
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Barney Ross, born Dov-Ber Rasofsky (December 23, 1909–January 17, 1967) was a boxer.
Dov-Ber (or Beryl) Rasofsky was born in New York City to Isidore "Itchik" Rasofsky and Sarah Epstein Rasofsky. His father was a Talmudic scholar who had emigrated to America from his native Brest-Litovsk after barely surviving a pogrom. The family then moved from New York to Chicago. Isidore became a rabbi and owner of a small vegetable shop in Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood, a vibrant Jewish ghetto akin to the New York's Lower East Side of the 1920s and '30s.
The young Rasofsky grew up on Chicago's mean streets, ultimately ignoring his father's admonition that Jews do not fight back.
"'Let the atheists be the fighters,'" Ross later recalled being told by his father. "'The trumbeniks, the murderers - we are the scholars.'" Ross's ambition in life was to become a Jewish teacher and a Talmudic scholar, but his life was changed forever when his father was shot dead resisting a robbery at his small...
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