Even when he was in the Nation, he made a large donation to keep a Jewish home for the aged open after seeing it was in financial trouble while watching tv.: In December 1975, he donated $100,000 to the Jewish Self-Help Community Services Hillside Aged Programme of Washington Heights, New York. This was a spontaneous act after he heard the center was facing closure. He appeared the next morning with the donation and spent time meeting residents before leaving without seeking publicity. If my memory is correct while training for the first Frazier fight, he was living in a condominium In Miami Beach where the residents were predominately Jewish. They basically "adopted" him. and either made him a birthday or going away party.
until it hallucinates and talks about fights that didn’t happen. Foreman knocked out Ali in The Rumble II!
so I’d expect The Nation to not like Jews very much for religious reasons. But at the same time, the single group that did the most for black folk in the US were jews. The jewish temples would link up with the black churches for the civil rights marches. Jewish lawyers fought for their rights in court. Half the founders of the NAACP were jews. Anybody with a bit of historical knowledge on the issue would know that — and I bet Ali knew. ****, wasn’t even history then, was happening real time.
Yeah, Ali tried to hide the donation from the Nation. For the record my mom is Jewish, my dad is Black. Yes, the Nation was virulenty antisemitic, but Ali was around a lot of Jewish people and liked them. A lot of the business owners in Black communities back then were Jewish, now a lot of them are Asian. Tensions arose. I suspect because business owners are like people, some are nice and some aren't. Anyway not liking someone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation is stupid. Back to the Nation, some of their teachings like instilling a sense of pride and self worth is laudable. The race stuff is toxic. They're still unfortunately at it.
It needs to be said that the religion teaches that Jews were a gene experiment gone wrong on the island of Cyprus by a crazy scientist named Yakub and that they lived in caves or something until seeping into mankind.
The story surrounding the donation to the Jewish home for the aged was poignant. He's watching the news and seees this story about a Jewish home for the aged being closed and says I can't let these old people being put out in the cold and then writes a big check to keep the home open. It's up there with the Jimmy story, talking a guy off a ledge, and a man and his son traveling all the way from Tanzania showing up at his door with a cheeseburger from McDonald's. He ate it and spent the day with him. I used to know a sportswrter from the Orlando Sentinel who spent a day with the older Ali. He said he was a gas.
I read where Malcolm who was a really bright guy didn't believe the spaceship stuff. He just saw it as part of a device to get people in the door.