It was as if Samson had been reincarnated.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, many Jewish men and their children were transfixed by their black-and-white television screens on nights when wrestling was televised and the featured fighter was Rafael Halperin.

After a war in which six million Jews were slaughtered, here was a Jew, sinewy and fearless, who could vanquish most of his opponents, some of whom were chosen because they looked like comic-book villains. So what if there were rumors that the fights were staged. Halperin was someone who appeared to be a genuine ethnic hero.

Halperin and other Jewish Samsons — wrestlers and boxers — are the focus of a modest new exhibition, “Yiddish Fight Club,” opening Thursday evening at the Yivo Institute of Jewish Research at the Center for Jewish History on West 16th Street in Manhattan. The show is laced with multiple Yiddish terms for pugilistic moves, like “knak” (a hard punch), “shtaysl” (an uppercut) and “der gubernator” (jabbing one’s thumb into a foe’s rib cage).

“Jews were traditionally stereotyped as intellectuals and nebbishes,” the exhibition’s creator, Eddy Portnoy, said, “but there was always an element of the working class that was tough and street smart and worked with their hands and fought with their hands.”