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In 1938, a 45-year-old circus strongman and vaudeville performer tore down a sign that read “No Dogs or Jews Allowed” posted at a meeting place for the American Nazi Party. The Nazis streamed into the street to attack him, but a good number of them ended up in the hospital. In the courtroom, along with the 18 plaintiffs he’d injured, the judge asked him about the fight. He replied, “It wasn’t a fight, your honor. It was a pleasure!”
Joseph Greenstein (1893–1977) was only 5 feet 4 inches tall, but once you saw him in action, you’d never forget him.
He was a man who dearly loved his adopted country and pursued the American Dream.
When Opportunity Knocked
Born prematurely into a poor family in Suwalki, Poland, a thriving Jewish community, Greenstein barely survived infancy and was in poor health throughout his adolescence. At some point soon after he was recovering from tuberculosis in 1907, the same disease that had already taken his father, he learned that the Issakoff Brothers’ Traveling Circus had come to town. The scrawny youth tried to slip inside without paying, lacking the money for admission. Apprehended and beaten, he was thrown into the street, where the sideshow’s strongman, Champion Volanko, took pity on him and offered to take him on the road and to show him the way to better health.
From that point on in his life, Greenstein soaked up lessons from the people he met and the places he visited. From Volanko he learned the importance of diet and discipline, the fundamentals of exercise and fitness, and the art of Greco-Roman wrestling. When they arrived in India, he was exposed to breathing and meditation techniques and their importance. By the time the circus returned to Poland, Greenstein had become a man growing fit in mind and body.
Though he wished to continue traveling with the circus, Volanko told him that he’d taught the young man everything he knew and encouraged him to go home. Now 18, his arrival shocked not only his mother, who had assumed he was dead, but his childhood sweetheart, Leah, as well. They married and would remain husband and wife for over 60 years, producing 10 children.
More Adventures
Greenstein worked for a short time in Suwalki, then decided to emigrate to America. He settled first in Galveston, Texas, where he worked on the docks and in the oil fields and wrestled professionally in his spare time, all the while saving money so that Leah and their infant daughter could book passage on a ship and join him. At one point, while working aboard a ship that landed for a time in Japan, he likely studied the basics of ju-jitsu.
Soon after Leah arrived in Galveston, Greenstein was shot in the forehead with a .38 by an acquaintance in what the Houston Daily Post called an accident. Some accounts report that the shooter was actually insane with love for Leah, but whatever the case, the bullet flattened against Greenstein’s skull or ricocheted off instead of killing him. Later that day, after being treated at the hospital, he walked home.
This miraculous escape from death had a profound impact on Greenstein. He continued his physical fitness regimen—manual labor added to his strength—and his wrestling, but he also became a diligent student of the mind and a believer in willpower. To accomplish great deeds, including those requiring superhuman strength, meant bringing willpower into play.
The Mighty Atom Takes Off
Having become a bit of a legend in Galveston, Greenstein moved his family to New York City in 1914 and set up shop at Coney Island, where he began performing feats of physical strength for audiences. Over the next six decades, Greenstein entertained Americans with his incredible repertoire, all the while advocating for a lifestyle of fresh air, exercise, and wholesome foods. “You dig your grave with a knife and fork,” he would say to his audiences. He gave back to the country that had taken him in by participating in bond drives during World War II and training the New York City Police Department in physical fitness and jujitsu.
Calling himself “the Mighty Atom,” growing out his hair, and dressing like a Samson reincarnated, Greenstein performed seemingly impossible feats. Here is just a partial list of performances that shocked his audiences. He pulled a 32-ton truck and on another occasion held back an airplane trying to take off; he lay on a bed of nails while supporting a 14-person band on a board on his chest. More routinely, he broke up chains wrapped around his chest by expanding his lungs, removed car tires from their rims by hand, chewed nails in half, bent steel bars and horseshoes with his bare hands, and drove spikes into wooden plans using only the palm of his hand.
As vaudeville and sideshows faded, followed by the Great Depression and the war years, Greenstein added natural medicines and tonics to his repertoire, which he claimed would enhance well-being. In a short film found on YouTube, he demonstrates his ability to put a nail through a thick board using only his hand, bites a nail in half with his teeth, and then says, “Clean living. No smoking. No alcohol. No squandering your life, nights by playing cards in stuffy rooms.”
Perhaps Greenstein’s most remarkable stunt was his own longevity and fitness. Though his age diminished his powers, he continued his strongman demonstrations into his 80s. He gave his last performance at Madison Square Gardens on May 11, 1977, and died just months later, age 84, in Brooklyn.
When Body Building Meant Character Building
Greenstein is largely forgotten nowadays. His was of a different time, and like so many celebrities, the passage of years has swallowed up his fame.
Yet even a brief look into the Mighty Atom’s story provides valuable lessons in living, as well as quintessential insights into the American character—messages needed just as much today as they were then.
First, from adolescence on, Greenstein took responsibility for his life. He learned that a man can make of himself what he wills, if that will is strong and true to its ultimate goal. He trained daily, not with weights, but with household and natural items to build his grip and core. In an online article, “The Mighty Atom,” we read that “he spent hours swinging hammers, bending steel, or carrying heavy stones—training techniques that might seem eccentric to many but proved vital in his development of ‘real world’ strength.”
His views on the importance of diet—natural foods, whole grains, lots of vegetables and fruits—preceded today’s caution against processed foods laced with artificial ingredients.
Mind Over Matter
In addition to physical development, Greenstein pursued the power of the mind. From the lessons learned in his youth in India, followed by years of study and experience, he realized that thought can be a driving force in accomplishing what is seen as impossible. In the article cited above, the author, identified only as Michael, wrote:
“The Mighty Atom was a fervent believer in the power of the mind. He emphasized that physical strength was not just about bulging muscles and brute force; it was a mental game. To him, willpower was the key to unlock the door to seemingly impossible feats of strength.”
In his book “Break Through the Limits of the Brain,” Joseph Selbie reports that “Greenstein made a lifelong study of the Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition, and among many of his insights he found inspiring connections between the Kabbalah’s ‘inner light’ and the Chinese and Japanese notions of life force which we often hear referred to as ‘chi.’ It was the quest for mastery of his life force and the demonstration of its power that was Joe Greenstein’s personal ‘spiritual endeavor.’”
Though of a different and broader perspective, this is a belief long held by Americans, from Benjamin Franklin’s writings to Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking.” The means and manner pursued in living life to the full differ, but the will and the mind are key. “How does an ant carry 100 times his body weight?” Volanko asked the teenager Greenstein, then answered his own question: “He’s an insect. He doesn’t know he can’t.” Greenstein saw that many people incarcerate themselves in prisons built from their own doubt and lack of imagination.
Finally, Greenstein embodies the American Dream as it was meant to be. In the movie “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” an emigrant grandmother says to her grandchildren, “Here in this place each one is free to go as far as he’s good to make of himself.” By force of will, the power of positive thinking, and physical prowess, Joseph Greenstein went far and triumphed over sickness and circumstance.
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