“The Greatest” Looks on as Grandson Becomes a Bar Mitzvah
Muhammed Ali attends service in Philadelphia synagogue
Muhammed AliIn what might have come straight from “truth is stranger than fiction” news file, the man who used to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” recently attended his grandson’s bar mitzvah.
You heard that correctly.
Muhammed Ali, considered by many to be the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, was in attendance at Philadelphia’s Congregation Rodelph Shalom recently when his grandson, Jacob Wertheimer, was called to the Torah.
Jacob is the son of Ali’s daughter, Khaliah Ali-Wertheimer, who was raised as a Muslim, and her husband, attorney Spencer Wertheimer.
"It meant a lot to Jacob that he was there," Khaliah told TheSweetScience.com. "I was born and raised as a Muslim, but I'm not into organized religion. I'm more spiritual than religious. My husband is Jewish. No one put any pressure on Jacob to believe one way or another. He chose this on his own because he felt a kinship with Judaism and Jewish culture."
Originally known as Cassius Clay, Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975. In 1967, three years after Ali had won the World Heavyweight Championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger,” Ali said at the time.
Ali would go on to become the first and only three-time lineal World Heavyweight Champion and, in 1999, he was crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC.
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