By Paul Greenberg
LA JOLLA, California — Rabbi Gary Katz began the highly informative and well-received program, Breakfast With The Mob, that took place in the rehearsal room at the Lawrence Family JCC on Monday, January 21, with an hour-long power point presentation about Jewish gangsters, who operated what might literally be called “cut-throat businesses” in New York during the 1920’s and 1930’s.
The 1960 film, Murder, Inc., with a break-out performance by Peter Falk, followed the talk after a brief intermission. The program was attended by 70 people, and was organized by the JCC’s Senior Adult Department led by Melanie Rubin, director of Adults and Senior Programs.
Some of the highlights of the talk included stories about Arnold Rothstein, for whom gambling was the first and last thing he was involved in. Being cut off from his father for marrying a non-Jew gave young Arnold the freedom to build a successful life of crime.
“Some of the guys from downtown didn’t like this kid from uptown (Rothstein) because they thought he was a little too hoity toity and uppity. So they wanted to teach him a lesson. He liked to play a lot of pool and craps. So they hired a pool shark from Philadelphia and brought him all the way to New York City and didn’t tell Rothstein that this guy was a really good pool player. And he was hanging out at the pool hall and challenged Rothstein to a game. They played the best out of three and the guy beat him. They played again and Rothstein bet everything and lost again. It started on a Thursday night and they played all night Thursday, all night Friday, all day Saturday, and by Saturday night Rothstein was up $10,000. And they went out together to the Turkish baths and relaxed together. The point is it shows his nerves of steel, self-will, and drive that he had to succeed . And that will and effort was something that outlasted his rivals.
Rothstein also brought the style and finesse of the Upper East Side to the gangster world. He worked at pursuits, wore nice hats, had a handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, wore fancy shoes, and was the first to take a whole wad of money out of his pocket and roll out bills. His style became synonymous with gangsters. He also elevated the game of craps, which had been a sidewalk or street game and he played it on velvet covered tables and gave it a little more class. He was eventually able to open his own casino in midtown and was making about $10,000 a week, which was a lot of money in the early 1920’s.”
Rothstein also understood capitalism and the inherent greed and sometimes hypocrisy that exists in capitalism. During Prohibition, two small-time gangsters from Detroit came to him and wanted to smuggle liquor from Canada over Lake Huron in boats and distribute it through Detroit and they needed the financing to do so. Instead of bringing liquor on a huge steamliner, as the two small-time gangsters had suggested, he proposed to hire the gangsters and use an entire ship to bring in liquor from England, have the ship stop three miles off Long Island, where it was met by three very fast cutter boats. The boats travelled to Montouk, Long Island, where the cargo was placed on trucks and taken to a place in midtown Manhattan, where the alcohol was distributed all over the country.
Like all good business people, he saw a good business opportunity and took advantage of it.
Rothstein made most of his money on alcohol. He bought off police and judges and was the first gangster who had Jews and Italians working together. He was shot in the stairwell of a motel on 56th Street, where he went to meet another gambler, to whom he owed a gambling debt he had no intention of paying because he felt he had been cheated at the card game. As was customary for such occasions, he foolishly didn’t bring a gun with him, was taken to a hospital where he refused to tell police anything (in fact, he told the police he would take care of it), became delirious because of an in infection caused by the wound, and died several days later at home.
Rothstein was a complex man. When his father’s cotton business was in financial trouble and his store had been foreclosed on, and he was on the verge of bankruptcy, Rothstein gave money to a bank to loan to his father on the condition that his father not know who the money was coming from. The loan helped his father become successful.
Many Jewish gangsters were two-sided: good to their family, shul, and State of Israel, but also ruthless.
In an interesting sidenote, Rabbi Katz pointed out it was Rothstein’s attorney who started the idea of pleading the fifth (a right which was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court), which many gangsters started taking advantage of.
Meyer Lansky met Lucky Luciano on the Lower East side. Luciano was very impressed with how Lansky stood up to five older Italian boys who still beat him up. The two quickly became friends, and their boss, Joe Massaria, was assassinated in a set-up at a restaurant.
The mob made money, first as enforcers for businesses whose workers had gone on strike, and later as workers for the unions. When there were no striking workers and no labor strife, the mob became involved in running unions.
One of the gangsters who became involved with running unions was Louis Buchalter, who teamed with Jacob Shapiro to form the Gorilla Boys, who were well-known for shaking down bakeries.
The syndicate was quite democratic: they agreed there would be no killings unless all families voted yes. When there was a killing, they used contract killers.
Abe Reles was one of the contract killers who was infamous for choking his victims to death as a member of the Brownsville Troupe. He was found dead on the ground. Was he pushed from his hotel room, or did he jump because he became stir crazy from being cooped up for so long as he divulged details of the mob life to authorities?
J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, for a long time, refused to acknowledge even the existence of the mob. Did he say this because he was focused more on civil rights or because the mob had something on him? It was left up to assistant District Attorney, Thomas Dewey, to prosecute the gangsters.
By the mid to late 1930’s, because of the Holocaust, Jews had become seen as victims, not tough guys.
There are Jewish gangsters in Las Vegas and Florida, and they are possibly involved in the kosher food industry and burial plots, instead of the mob’s more traditional pursuits such as drugs, gambling, and prostitution, according to Rabbi Katz.
The name Murder, Inc. was coined by a prosecutor.
Why did Jews become gangsters? According to Rabbi Katz, some reasons were that it was the only thing they could do and make money at, there was a generational gap with parents who couldn’t understand their kids as they grew up in America, and perhaps they didn’t have the capacity for being a mensch.
Rabbi Gary Katz currently works at Chabad Hebrew Academy of San Diego and has a private counseling practice.
He was ordained by the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem in 1991 and has worked for the past 20 plus years for the Jewish Community in various roles in Israel and North America. During this time, he taught and organized programs for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Jewish Day Schools such as The Ramaz School and Solomon Schechter Schools of Manhattan. Rabbi Katz also served as the Director of the Kislak Adult Center of the New Jersey YMHA Camps. He is a social worker who combines his Judaic and social work backgrounds in promoting social justice and personal development.
*
Paul Greenberg is a freelance writer based in La Jolla.