Jewish-American organized crime
Jewish-American organized crime collected nicknames the way its members collected rackets. The press and popular culture called it the Jewish Mob, the Jewish Mafia, the Kosher Mob, the Kosher Mafia and the Yiddish Connection.
Two of the labels pointed straight at the Italian underworld. Kosher Nostra played on the Jewish dietary word for permitted food. Undzer Shtik, written in Yiddish script, carried the Italian phrase Cosa Nostra into Yiddish, and means "our thing." At the time, Yiddish was the main language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
The story begins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inside the American Jewish community itself. So how did poor immigrant children end up running gambling, liquor and labor rackets? Did they commit crime at the scale their neighbors feared? Why did they join forces with Italian gangsters rather than fight them? And why did a community that once produced such powerful figures work so hard to forget them?
Monk Eastman led one of the most powerful Jewish gangs in New York at the turn of the 20th century. The Eastman Gang fought Italian and Irish rivals for control of the city's underworld, most notably Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang.
Another crew, the Lenox Avenue Gang, was run by Harry "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz. Most of its members were Jewish, though a few were Italian, such as Francesco Cirofisi. It ranked among the most violent gangs of its day and became famous for the murder of the gambler and gangster Herman Rosenthal.
A large wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe fed the ranks. Among the mobsters it produced were Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, "Big" Jack Zelig and Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis. Italian and Irish gangs competed with them and also acknowledged them.
On the Lower East Side, extortion gangs copied their Italian counterparts. The best known was the Yiddish Black Hand, headed by Jacob Levinsky, Charles "Charlie the Cripple" Litoffsky and Joseph Toplinsky. Jewish mobsters of the period even had a slang of their own, drawn from Yiddish. A pimp was a "simcha," a detective a "shamus," and a loafer a "trombenik."
One account describes the typical gangster's path. As pre-teens, these slum kids stole from pushcarts. As adolescents, they extorted money from store owners. As young adults, they practiced "schlamming," which meant swinging an iron pipe wrapped in newspaper at striking workers or at strikebreakers.
"Dopey" Benny Fein and Joe "The Greaser" Rosenzweig turned that skill into a trade. They hired out as strong-arm men to both businesses and labor unions. The business became known as labor slugging, and it set off the Labor Slugger Wars among racketeers, including former Five Points men Nathan "Kid Dropper" Kaplan and Johnny Spanish. The fighting ended in 1927, when Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro took the whole business over.
Newspapers in early 20th century New York warned of a Jewish crime wave. Young Jews, it was said, were joining criminal rackets in disturbing numbers, alongside the children of Irish, Italian and other immigrants. Quick money, power and the romance of the outlaw life tempted second-generation Jewish and Italian immigrants alike.
The numbers tell a different story. Sociologist Stephen Steinberg found that Jews made up nearly a third of New York's population in the 1920s. Yet they accounted for less than a sixth of the city's felony arrests. The press and law enforcement may simply have exaggerated the problem.
Historians describe a pattern called ethnic succession, in which each immigrant wave took its turn in the underworld. The order ran English, German, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Asian and Latino. Law enforcement drew a grim lesson from this. Officials developed alien conspiracy theories, picturing organized crime as a single foreign body. A small share of recent immigrants in crime left a lasting stereotype of devious newcomers corrupting native-born Americans.
Antisemites and anti-immigration campaigners used the gangsters as ammunition. Jewish leaders were deeply worried, and with good reason. These men extorted, exploited and murdered members of their own community for profit, and forced Jewish women into prostitution. The Yiddish press and literature of the 1920s and 1930s condemned them without reservation.
The Jewish gangsters were also not at the top of the heap. Irish-American networks had been established well before the 1920s, and the newer Jewish and Italian groups were sometimes subordinate to them.
Arnold Rothstein controlled bootlegging, loansharking, gambling and bookmaking in the early 1920s. Crime writer Leo Katcher said Rothstein turned organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, "run like a corporation, with himself at the top." Rothstein was also allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series.
Author Rich Cohen called Rothstein the person to see during Prohibition, which ran from 1920 to 1933, if you had an idea for a huge business opportunity, legal or not. In Cohen's reading, Rothstein understood the hypocrisy, exclusion and greed of early 20th century capitalism, and came to dominate all three.
Cohen went further and named him the "Moses of Jewish gangsters." Rothstein was a rich man's son. He showed the young, uneducated hoodlums of the Bowery how to carry themselves with style.
The most famous student was Lucky Luciano, who would rise to become a prominent boss in the Italian-American Mafia. Luciano once claimed that Rothstein "taught me how to dress." The sharp-suited mobster of the movies owes part of his wardrobe directly to Rothstein.
Luciano had other Jewish friends who mattered even more to his plans, and one of them was a young man named Meyer Lansky.
Bootleggers in Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York City and Philadelphia all ran Jewish gangs during Prohibition. Two outfits marked the peak of Jewish-American organized crime. One was the Bug and Meyer Mob, headed by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel. The other was Abe Bernstein's Purple Gang, which dominated the Detroit underworld.
Other fortunes were made in other cities. Dutch Schultz grew rich in New York and Moe Dalitz in Michigan. Charles "King" Solomon did the same in Boston, and Abner "Longy" Zwillman earned the nickname "the Al Capone of New Jersey." Kid Cann held sway over Minneapolis for more than four decades, and remains the most notorious mobster in Minnesota history.
Dalitz later built the most elaborate Jewish-led operation of all, the Cleveland Syndicate. His partners were fellow Jewish gangsters Louis Rothkopf, Maurice Klein, Sam Tucker and Charles Polizzi, plus an Irish gangster, Blackjack McGinty. Polizzi was born Leo Berkowitz to Jewish parents who died when he was a baby. The Polizzi family adopted him, and his adoptive brother Alfred Polizzi headed the Italian Mayfield Road Mob.
On Lake Erie, the Syndicate ran liquor in a fleet known as the Little Jewish Navy. It later operated casinos in Youngstown, Northern Kentucky and Florida, including several in Newport, Kentucky. The Kentucky reign ended after a botched attempt to discredit George Ratterman, a candidate for sheriff, and a federal crackdown during the Kennedy Administration.
Syndicate members also put money into horse tracks. These included River Downs, Fair Grounds Race Course, Thistledown Racecourse, Fairmount Park Racetrack, Aurora Downs and the Agua Caliente Racetrack. They were early investors in the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and held it until Howard Hughes bought it.
Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky formed a close partnership, and together they cleared out the so-called "Mustache Petes." These were Sicilian-born gangsters who often refused to work with anyone who was not Italian, or even not Sicilian. Luciano valued longtime associates like Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, and did not discriminate against Jews.
In the 1931 Castellammarese War, Luciano eliminated the Old World bosses Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano and took control of the New York Italian Mafia. Jewish gangsters Red Levine and Bo Weinberg served as hitmen. Because they were not Italian, nobody saw them coming.
After the two bosses were murdered, a conference was held at New York's Franconia Hotel on the 11th of November 1931. The Jewish guests included 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.
Luciano and Lansky persuaded them to cooperate with the Italian-American Mafia in a new consortium that the press called the National Crime Syndicate. Siegel supposedly closed the meeting by declaring that the two sides would stop fighting each other.
Not everyone agreed to the deal. Philadelphia bootlegger Waxey Gordon resisted and gradually receded. He was convicted of tax evasion on evidence that Lansky passed to United States Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Nig Rosen and Max "Boo Hoo" Hoff took over his operations.
The cooperation went deep. Buchalter led the largely Jewish Murder, Inc., the exclusive hit squad of the Luciano-Lansky syndicate, whose most feared killer was Abe Reles. The Bug and Meyer Mob was absorbed into Murder, Inc. and became affiliated with the Italian-American Mafia. Shared neighborhoods and similar social standing kept the two ethnic groups close into the 1960s, and the lines between them blurred.
Under Lansky, Jewish mobsters took part in syndicate gambling interests in Cuba, Miami and Las Vegas.
Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna explained the situation to hitman and later government informant Jimmy Fratianno. Lansky, he said, had a Jewish family built along the same lines as the Italian one, only spread all over the country. It included Lou Rhody, Dalitz, Doc Stacher and Gus Greenbaum, all sharp businessmen who knew better than to cross the Italians.
As late as the 1960s, the Jewish presence in organized crime was still considered significant. Lansky, Mickey Cohen in Los Angeles and Harold "Hooky" Rothman held real power in New York City, New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Las Vegas. Shondor Birns ran numbers, prostitution, theft and gambling rackets in Cleveland until 1975, when the Irish gangster Danny Greene murdered him.
After World War II, the Jewish share of the underworld began to shrink, as it did for the Irish and other groups outside the Italian-American mob. Jewish-American crime had grown out of poverty and dislocation, where language and custom left the community vulnerable. As American Jews improved their circumstances, the thug and racketeer either vanished or merged into a more assimilated American crime scene.
Unlike the Mafia, Jewish gangsters left no dynasties. Lansky, Schultz and Siegel founded no crime families. American Jews quietly buried the public memory of the gangster past, and the old gangs that once rivaled the Italians and Irish have largely faded.
From the late 1960s, a few Jewish American novelists brought the gangsters back as characters. After the war, some writers saw Jewish gangsters and boxers as tougher role models who could free the community from a stigma of defenselessness. Rich Cohen, author of Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams, wrote that he thought the community would be better off if such men still thrived. Instead, he said, his generation regarded them as "figments, creatures to be classed with Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster."
Brighton Beach in New York became the base for a newer kind of Jewish mobster in the last decades of the 20th century. Marat Balagula, Boris Nayfeld and Evsei Agron were Soviet Jews who came to dominate the Russian mob there. Monya Elson and Ludwig Fainberg belonged to the same circle.
A code of silence among Soviet Jewish emigres, who arrived under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, helped shield them. They were raised as secular Jews, and shared more culturally with non-Jews from the former Soviet Union than with Lansky, Kid Cann or Mickey Cohen. Those older men grew up in Orthodox families.
The reach extended abroad. Budapest-based Semion Mogilevich took part in a US$10 billion money-laundering operation through the Bank of New York in 1998. Israeli organized crime also reached America, and the Tel Aviv-based Abergil crime family was heavily involved in trafficking ecstasy.
Israel itself became a refuge and a worry. Since the country's creation in 1948, several American mobsters sent money to Israel through Jewish organizations. Others used its Law of Return to escape criminal charges or deportation, among them Doc Stacher, who had helped build Las Vegas by joining the Jewish and Italian mobs. In 1970, Prime Minister Golda Meir set out to reverse the trend by denying entry to Meyer Lansky.
In 2010, Wikileaks reported a United States Embassy cable titled "Israel: The Promised Land of Organized Crime?" American diplomats voiced grave concern about Israeli crime figures and moved to keep members of crime families from receiving visas. They were troubled that Inbal Gavrieli, niece of one of Israel's most powerful mafia bosses, had been elected to the Knesset for Likud.
A very different crime emerged within Orthodox communities. From the 1990s until 2013, the New York divorce coercion gang kidnapped and tortured Orthodox Jewish men in troubled marriages to force them to grant religious divorces. It sometimes extorted money from them, charging up to $100,000 for its services. Prosecutors called it a "criminal syndicate" that was "akin to the Bloods, the Crips, or the Mafia."
An FBI sting shut the ring down. Judge Freda Wolfson said she saw no difference between this "well-organized operation" and traditional kidnapping cases. In 2015, gang leader Mendel Epstein was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Co-conspirator Martin Wolmark received more than 3 years and a $50,000 fine.
A 2016 sting caught Aharon Goldberg and Shimen Liebowitz, two Satmar Hasidic Jews in what The Forward called the "Orthodox divorce underworld." They had conspired with a third man to carry out a contract killing on an estranged husband.
Up next
Updated
Common questions
What is Jewish-American organized crime?
Jewish-American organized crime emerged within the American Jewish community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The press called it the Jewish Mob, the Jewish Mafia, the Kosher Mob, the Yiddish Connection and Kosher Nostra.
What does Undzer Shtik mean in Jewish-American organized crime?
Undzer Shtik is a Yiddish rendering of the Italian phrase Cosa Nostra, meaning "our thing." Yiddish was the main language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States at the time.
Who was Arnold Rothstein in Jewish-American organized crime?
Arnold Rothstein controlled bootlegging, loansharking, gambling and bookmaking in the early 1920s and was allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. Crime writer Leo Katcher said he turned organized crime into a big business run like a corporation.
How did Jewish-American organized crime connect to the Italian-American Mafia?
Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky formed a close partnership and, after the 1931 Castellammarese War, persuaded Jewish mobsters at a conference at New York's Franconia Hotel to cooperate with the Italian Mafia. The press named the result the National Crime Syndicate.
Which cities had Jewish gangs during Prohibition in Jewish-American organized crime?
Jewish gangs operated mainly in Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York City and Philadelphia. Notable groups included the Bug and Meyer Mob, the Purple Gang in Detroit and the Cleveland Syndicate led by Moe Dalitz.
Did Jewish people commit a disproportionate share of crime in early 20th century New York?
No. Sociologist Stephen Steinberg found that Jews made up nearly a third of New York's population in the 1920s but accounted for less than a sixth of the city's felony arrests, so the supposed Jewish crime wave may have been exaggerated.
Why did Jewish-American organized crime decline after World War II?
Jewish-American organized crime grew from poverty and dislocation, and as American Jews improved their conditions the racketeers disappeared or merged into a more assimilated American crime scene. Figures like Lansky, Schultz and Siegel founded no crime families.
Did Jewish-American organized crime reappear in the late 20th century?
Yes, in the form of Orthodox Jewish, Israeli and Jewish-Russian criminal groups. Examples include Soviet Jewish mobsters in Brighton Beach such as Marat Balagula and Boris Nayfeld, and the New York divorce coercion gang active from the 1990s until 2013.
All sources
48 references cited across the entry
- 1BookYiddish ConnectionRich Cohen — Gallimard — 2002
- 3NewsBook of the Week: The Kosher NostraGus Tyler — June 22, 1970
- 5BookAmerican Jewish GangstersLarry D. Gragg
- 6Katcher, Leo (1959/1994). The Big Bankroll. The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein, New York: Da Capo Press
- 7Pietrusza, David (2003). Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.
- 8Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia, pp. 319–321
- 9On the plaques above see the name Max Siegel, Siegel's father, whose Hebrew name is "Mordechai Dov ben Reb Beirush HaLevi" (from the Hebraic tribe of the Levites) and the one for Siegel, whose Hebrew
- 10Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution & Prejudice, The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939, Schocken, 1983
- 18Journal"The Jew Usually Left Those Crimes to Esau": The Jewish Responses to Accusations about Jewish Criminality in New York, 1908—1913Gil Ribak — April 2014
- 21BookMaxwell Street: Survival in a BazaarIra Berkow — Doubleday — 1977
- 22History of Maxwell Street Station2008-06-07
- 23BookThe Kosher Capones - A History Of Chicago's Jewish GangstersJoe Kraus — North Illinois University Press — 2019
- 26Cohen, Rich (1999). Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams, London: Vintage
- 27Kavieff, Paul R. (2000). The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910–1945. New York: Barricade
- 28Sann, Paul (1971). Kill the Dutchman!: The Story of Dutch Schultz. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House.
- 29Sifakis, Carl (2005). The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press.
- 33Lacey, Robert (1991). Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life, New York: Little Brown.
- 34Turkus, Burton, and Sid Feder (1951). Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
- 35Lewis, Brad. Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster: The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen. New York: Enigma Books, 2007. (p. 34)
- 36BookThe Last MafiosoOvid Demaris — Bantam Books — 1981
- 38Steffensmeier, Darrell J. and T. Ulmer (2005). Confessions of a Dying Thief: Understanding Criminal Careers and Illegal Enterprise. New Brunswick (NJ): Aldine Transaction.
- 44BookA Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East SideEric Ferrara — Arcadia Publishing — June 16, 2009
- 46Robert I. Friedman, Red Mafia: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America
- 48BookGangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era AmericaMichael Benson — Citadel Publishing — 2022
- 49BookThe Kosher Capones - A History Of Chicago's Jewish GangstersJoe Kraus — North Illinois University Press — 2019