Jewish-American organized crime

Jewish-American organized crime (sometimes called the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mafia, or the Kosher Nostra[1] — a pun on the term "Cosa Nostra"), emerged during the late years of the 19th century and early 20th century.




In its earliest form, in New York City in the late 1800s, Jewish gangs under gang lord Monk Eastman competed with Italian and Irish gangs, notably Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang, for control of New York's underworld. In the early 1920s, stimulated by the economic opportunities of the Roaring Twenties and later, Prohibition, organized crime figures such as Arnold Rothstein rose to dominate more extensive organized crime activity.



According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Arnold Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top."[2] Rothstein was allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series.[3

Origins and characteristics


Jewish-American gangsters were involved in many areas of organized crime, including racketeering, bootlegging, prostitution[4] and narcotics. Their role was also significant in New York's burgeoning labor movement, especially the garment and trucking unions, as well as poultry workers. Jewish-American organized crime was a matter of obvious concern to the community, because Jewish gangsterism was seen as irreconcilable with the ethics of Judaism and provided fodder for prejudice against Jews.[5] It did not exemplify Jewish immigration and its offspring, nevertheless it was exploited by anti-semites and anti-immigration forces as arguments to bolster their prejudices. However, it did exist in large enough reality to permeate the Lower East Side and Brownsville areas in New York City,[6] and other major American cities.



Jewish American organized crime was a reflection of the ethnic succession among gangsters, which has tended to follow the immigrant waves in the United States: English, German, Irish, Jewish and then Italian. Ethnic involvement in organized crime gave rise to alien conspiracy theories in the US law enforcement community, in which the conception of organized crime as an alien and united entity was vital. It was presented as many-faced, calculating and relentlessly probing for weak spots in the armor of American morality. America had to be protected from this alien threat. The conspiracy theories conveniently ignored the fact that Jewish-American and Italian-American criminals generally co-existed with (even sometimes subordinate to) other criminals, such as Irish-American organized crime networks before the 1920s.[7]



From the late 1960s, Jewish American organized crime became part of an entire literature on "tough Jews." The gangsters and boxers among who Jews played a prominent role in the pre- World War II era, were seen as tougher, more aggressive role models, which freed Jews from the dominant stereotype of intellectualism and professional legitimacy, and the stigma of defenselessness and powerlessness, compared with the physical aggressiveness and lawlessness, which was more stereotypical of the Irish and Italian immigrants and their mobs.[8][9][10] According to Rich Cohen, author of Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams:



"if Jewish gangsters still thrived today, if they hadn't gone legit, if Jews of my generation didn't regard them as figments, creatures to be classed with Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster, I think the Jewish community would be better off."[9]

Following Cohen's line of reasoning, one could say that Jewish American organized crime played a role in the emancipation of the Jewish American community in American society. However, Cohen's description of Jewish gangsters ignores that they were criminals who made some of their money by extorting and exploiting other members of the American Jewish community, including the trafficking of women,[4] and were generally considered a scourge within their own community.[11] The Yiddish press and literature of the 1920s and 30s was resolute in its condemnation of Jewish mobsters.[citation needed]



[edit] History

[edit] 19th Century-early 20th Century

Largely originating from the immigration from Eastern Europe during the late-19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish mobsters such as Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, "Big" Jack Zelig, and Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis, competed with Jewish-American organized crime was not exclusively a New York phenomenon, however, as seen during the early 20th century in other major cities with a considerable Jewish-American population as predominantly Jewish-American gangs operated as well, such as The Purple Gang in Detroit.



As would their Italian counterparts, gangs specializing in extortion began operating in the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York's Lower East Side most prominently the so-called Yiddish Black Hand headed by Jacob Levinsky, Charles "Charlie the Cripple" Litoffsky and Joseph Toplinsky during the early 1900s. Early in the century a significant Jewish underworld already existed, giving birth to a litany of criminal slang with Yiddish origins. A pimp was known as a "simcha," a detective as a "shamus" and a loafer as a "trombenik."[12] Jewish-American organized crime arose among slum kids who in pre-puberty stole from pushcarts, who as adolescents extorted money from store owners, who as young adults practiced schlamming (wielding an iron pipe wrapped in newspaper against striking workers or against scabs) – until they developed into well organized criminal gangs in a wide variety of criminal enterprises boosted by Prohibition.[13]



For both second-generation Jewish and Italian immigrants, the lure of crime often competed quite successfully with mainstream opportunities. There was a Jewish "crime wave" in early-20th-century New York. About a sixth of the city's felony arrests were Jews. Many young Jewish criminals gravitated toward the "rackets," where they met up with the children of Irish, Italian, and other immigrants.[14]





Harry StraussAs the 20th century progressed, Jewish-American mobsters such as "Dopey" Benny Fein and Joe "The Greaser" Rosenzweig entered labour racketeering, hiring out to both businesses and labor unions as strong arm men. Labor racketeering or "labor slugging" as it was known, would become a source of conflict as it came under the domination of several racketeers including former Five Points Gang members Nathan "Kid Dropper" Kaplan and Johnny Spanish during the Labor slugger wars until its eventual takeover by Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro in 1927. Other organized crime figures would include Moses Annenberg and Arnold Rothstein, the latter reportedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. [15]



According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Arnold Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top."[2] According to Rich Cohen, Rothstein was the person who first saw in Prohibition a business opportunity, a means to enormous wealth, who "understood the truths of early century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, greed) and came to dominate them". Rothstein was the Moses of the Jewish gangsters, according to Cohen, the progenitor, a rich man's son who showed the young hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style; indeed, the man who, the Sicilian-American gangster Lucky Luciano would later say, "taught me how to dress".[16]



[edit] 1920s-1930s



Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, driving force behind the development of Las VegasDuring Prohibition (1920-1933), Jewish gangsters became major operatives in the American underworld and played prominent roles in the creation and extension of organized crime in the United States. At the time, Jewish gangs dominated illicit activities in a number of America's largest cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York City, and Philadelphia. Numerous bootlegging gangs such as the Bug and Meyer Mob headed by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel and Abe Bernstein's Purple Gang [17] would see the rise of Jewish-American organized crime to its height. Other mobsters included Dutch Schultz,[18] Moe Dalitz, Charles "King" Solomon and Abner "Longy" Zwillman.



During this time, Italian mobster Charlie Luciano began plotting against the Old World Sicilian mafiosi to get rid of bosses like Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, enlisting the help of longtime associates Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel. After a mob war in 1931 Masseria and Maranzano were killed, a conference was held at New York's Franconia Hotel on November 11, 1931 which included mobsters such as Jacob Shapiro, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Joseph "Doc" Stacher, Hyman "Curly" Holtz, Louis "Shadows" Kravitz, Harry Tietlebaum, Philip "Little Farvel" Kovolick and Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg. During this meeting, Luciano and Lansky were able to convince the Jewish-American mobsters to agree to work with Italian mobsters in business following the end of the Castellammarese War – in a consortium known as the National Crime Syndicate[19][20]. At the meeting's conclusion, "Bugsy" Siegel supposedly declared "The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other."[21]



Those Jewish gangsters hostile to the idea of cooperation with non-Jewish rivals gradually receded, most notably Philadelphia bootlegger Waxey Gordon, who was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion. Following Gordon's imprisonment, his operations were assumed by Nig Rosen and Max "Boo Hoo" Hoff.



Under Lansky, Jewish mobsters became involved in syndicate gambling interests in Cuba and Las Vegas.[22] Buchalter would also lead the predominantly Jewish Murder Incorporated as the Luciano-Meyer syndicate's exclusive hitmen.[23]



[edit] After World War II



Frank Rosenthal with Frank Sinatra on the Frank Rosenthal ShowFor several decades after World War II, the dominant figures in organized crime were second-generation Jews and Italians, often working in concert. As late as the 1960s, Jewish presence in organized crime was still acknowledged as Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna explained to hitman and later government informant Jimmy "The Weasel" Fratianno:



"Meyer's got a Jewish family built along the same lines as our thing. But his family's all over the country. He's got guys like Lou Rhody and Dalitz, Doc Stacher, Gus Greenbaum, sharp guys, good businessmen, and they know better than to try to mess with us."

Jewish-American organized crime derived from dislocation and poverty, where language and custom made the community vulnerable to undesirables, the sort of thing that fosters criminality among any other ethnicity in a similar situation.[14] As American Jews improved their conditions, the Jewish thug and racketeer either disappeared or merged into a more assimilated American crime environment. American Jews quietly buried the public memory of the gangster past; unlike the Mafia, famous Jewish American gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel founded no crime families.[24]



Much like Irish Americans and other ethnicities (with exception to Italian American criminal organizations), Jewish-American presence in organized crime gradually faded after World War II. Jewish-American individuals remained associated with organized crime figures,[25] but the criminal organizations and gangs which once rivaled the Italian and Irish-American mobsters during the first half of the 20th century have long since disappeared.



[edit] Late 20th Century

In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Russian mafia criminal groups. The Soviet and Russian émigré community in New York's Brighton Beach contains a large Jewish presence, as does its criminal element. Some of these newer American-based Jewish gangsters, such as Ludwig Fainberg (who has lived in the Ukraine, Israel and the United States but never Russia), share more in common culturally with Russia and the Soviet republics than their predecessors such as Meyer Lansky.[26]



Israeli mobsters also have a presence in the United States. Yehuda “Johnny” Attias arrived in New York in 1987 and was ultimately murdered in January 1990. Several members such as Ron Gonen had turned informant and the authorities arrested the rest of the gang in September of that year.[27] The Israeli mafia (such as the Abergil crime family) is heavily involved in ecstasy trafficking in America[28]



[edit] Jewish-American organized crime and Israel

Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's independence in 1948. As a result, Israel became an option for Jewish-American gangsters fleeing criminal charges or facing deportation from the United States such as Joseph "Doc" Stacher and Meyer Lansky, the latter being denied citizenship by then Prime Minister Golda Meir who had been informed by the United States government of Lansky's long history in organized crime.