“A Jew needs to be strong, needs to be self-reliant,” Natan Levy told JNS, after a free seminar in a Brooklyn gym.
Natan Levy proudly carries the banner for Israel into the octagon as a mixed martial arts fighter in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). But at a time of heightened antisemitism, the Paris-born Israeli is insistent that all Jews should be able to fight for themselves.
“They’re gonna hate us, whether you’re confident or you’re not,” Levy told JNS of antisemites, who he said he long ago learned he couldn’t reason with. “Whether you practice Judaism or not, for them, you’re always going to be a Jew. So a Jew needs to be strong, needs to be self-reliant. And this is the way to move forward.”
This week, in the Fight Factory gym atop a Jewish community center in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., Levy, 32, provided a free seminar for those who looked like they’d been in a fight before and those who appeared to be throwing their first punches.
“I wanted to teach them some self-defense moves. But mostly, I wanted to inspire them to keep training because one hour is not going to help,” he told JNS. “You need to train regularly; you need to be strong, you need to be fit, you need to have knowledge of the techniques, you need a strong mind. Today was to give them a taste and inspire them to keep training.”