Orthodox Stance On DVD

For the last 60 years, the term “Jewish boxer” has been an oxymoron. But Dmitriy Salita, a 25 year-old Russian immigrant is making history as a top professional boxer and a rigorously observant Jew. While providing an intimate, 3-year long look at the trials and tribulations faced by an up and coming professional boxer, Orthodox Stance is a portrait of seemingly incompatible cultures and characters—boxing promoters, trainers and Orthodox Rabbis—working together to support Dmitriy’s rare and remarkable devotion to both Orthodox Judaism and the pursuit of a professional boxing title. In the end, the film is about more than just boxing and religion, but a young man’s search for meaning in life.

My parents live in the DC area and in September 2002 my mother clipped an extensive article on Dmitriy from the Washington Post Style Section. Because I had been a highly competitive Jewish athlete myself and had recently moved to Brooklyn, she thought I’d be interested in the article. It mentioned that Dmitriy was affiliated with a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Brooklyn so I called the Chabad Rabbi I knew from college and asked if he would contact Dmitriy’s Rabbi for me.

After reading the article and meeting Dmitriy, it wasn’t the anomalous “religious Jewish boxer” or the “will he become the next Jewish champ?” angles that attracted me, but rather, the diverse and wholly original characters and cultures that intersect at Dmitriy – an elderly African-American trainer, a Hasidic Rabbi, a Las Vegas boxing promoter; as well as the diversity of Dmitriy’s experience – a Russian immigrant, a religious Jew, a top boxing prospect. As a verite filmmaker, I shoot what I’m interested in learning about. I had no idea what the film would be like, I just knew I wanted to see how Dmitriy experiences these very different worlds, and one day share that experience with an audience.

After meeting Dmitriy in October 2002, I jumped into production without money or a timeline, devoting the next several years to keeping up with the story as it played out in New York, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Anaheim, Washington, Atlantic City and Philadelphia. After a few years of shooting, I began to think about a satisfying ending. I didn’t want to make a generic sports film because for me the film is about Dmitriy learning how to navigate the professional boxing world as a religious Jew, not whether he wins the big fight.

The junior title fight at the Hammerstein Ballroom ultimately provided the perfect ending. The grand venue, the atmosphere, Matisyahu – it was the natural culmination of that journey. Dmitriy says it best, just before the credits roll, “It’s the closing of a certain chapter in my life. As a kid you have dreams. And with hard work, faith and determination, dreams come true, and they’re coming true a little at a time.” As in life, one chapter ends and a new one begins.