← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Okiereddust
Thread ID: 19270 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-07-24
2005-07-24 21:22 | User Profile
by Allen Barra April 8, 1998
Rich Cohen [IMG]http://img.citypages.com/imagebank/articles/905/905books2.jpg[/IMG] [URL=http://www.citypages.com/databank/19/905/article4696.asp]Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams in Jewish America [/URL] Simon & Schuster
[B]Contrary to the received wisdom of Hollywood and popular fiction, hoods with names that ended in vowels didn't begin to dominate the newspapers until the late 1920s. Before then, from about World War I until near the end of prohibition, perhaps a majority of the most capable and creative gangsters in America--Monk Eastman, Arnold Rothstein, Moe Dalitz, Waxey Gordon, King Solomon, Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher, Lepke Buchhalter, Jacob Shapiro, Bo Weinberg, Arthur Fleggenheimer (a.k.a. Dutch Schultz), Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, Mickey Cohen--were Jewish[/B]. Rich Cohen's Tough Jews is about the suppressed if not entirely forgotten lore of the Jewish gangster in America, "less a straight history," writes Cohen, "than the story of a Brooklyn gang as seen through the eyes of my father and his friends... ." The book's subtitle is Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams in Jewish America; it might also have been called A Secret History of the Jewish Gangster.
Jews of Cohen's father's generation have a favorite gangster the way Catholics "have a patron saint," Cohen starts. And the author is quite good at evoking the vanished world of the all-Jewish neighborhoods that spawned Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Dutch Schultz, the delis and barbershops where the facts metamorphosed into legend. He's also good at pinning down the nature of the Jewish-Italian alliance that grew into what would be popularly known as the syndicate. "It was a marriage of convenience," one underworld observer tells Cohen. "[B]It was a marriage of the three M's: moxie, muscle, money. The Jews put up the moxie, the Italians supplied the muscle, and together they split the money." [/B] Cohen can't help but share his father's sneaking admiration for these thugs: "Here were men who had no idea Jews are supposed to be weak, so they weren't."
The problem with Tough Jews is that Cohen is lost when he wanders from these old neighborhoods into the historical world of organized crime. Despite Cohen's fascination with the now-vanished Jewish underworld, he really hasn't done much research on it. Cohen's major texts seem to be Albert Fried's admirable The Rise and Fall of The Jewish Gangster in America and Burton Turkus and Sid Feder's Murder, Inc: The Story of The Syndicate. After these titles, though, the author relies much too heavily on third-hand sources such as The Mafia Encyclopedia and The World Encyclopedia of Organized Crime, and, worse, Walter Winchell's autobiography, Things That Happened to Me--And Me to Them--books which have been recycling nonsense about the Mafia and organized crime for decades.
For instance, the old Mafia Dons, the so-called "Mustache Petes," did not trace their roots back to the "Black Hand of Sicily," as Cohen claims, nor is any real crime scholar today convinced there ever was such an organization. The idea that a coalition of young Italian and Jewish hands staged an uprising in 1930 that wiped out the old Sicilian hierarchy, the so-called "Night of The Vespers," has as much historical validity as a re-run of The Untouchables.
And the historical fiction doesn't stop there. Short on facts, Cohen revives a bad narrative idea that should have died with the pulp nonfiction of the '40s and '50s, namely inventing dialogue. (Every time Cohen quotes Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, or Bugsy Siegel without citing his sources, the reader, like the character in the old vaudeville routine, may want to ask Cohen, "Vas you dere, Charlie?") What Cohen doesn't invent he often guesses at: "As Lepke listened to the killers, he probably asked questions. Maybe he asked them to repeat things...Maybe he spoke softly...Probably he took his time...Hearing him talk on such occasions was probably like hearing someone read a key to a crossword puzzle out loud." Cohen probably should have written a novel.
Tough Jews is not as shoddy as this might sound, but it often seems as though Cohen hasn't thought through his fascinating subject, and it's disappointingly immature in its near approval of the criminal element. [B]If the most notorious Jewish gangsters were merely "playing what was dealt...trying to survive on the streets," what were the millions of respectable Jews doing who didn't commit murder or extort money?[/B] I [/I] Such insufficiencies in Tough Jews are best pointed out by a passage from a 1990 book by Paul Breines (which Cohen seems unaware of): "A critique of tough Jews ought...to begin and end with a summons gently to abolish the conditions that generate toughness itself." I [/I]
The title? Tough Jews: Political Fantasies and the Moral Dilemma of American Jewery.
2005-07-24 21:39 | User Profile
When they've got a book to sell, it's okay if they (not you) point out the Jews brought organized crime to America.
Once the book is off shelves and on remainder tables, only a hate-addled anti-Semite would refer to Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, Willie Bioff, Mickey Cohen, Lepke Buchalter, Jack Dragna etc etc as anything other than violin-playing candy-store owners forced into crime to keep lunatic Sicilians from garotting them for being a day late with their protection money.
2005-07-24 21:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Okiereddust] Cohen can't help but share his father's sneaking admiration for these thugs: "Here were men who had no idea Jews are supposed to be weak, so they weren't." [/QUOTE] "Weak zhids" is a charade put up as a smokescreen relatively recently in history. They have always been predators, as history review easily proves.
2005-07-24 22:01 | User Profile
An excerpt from Robert Friedman's book "Red Mafiya":
[url]http://www.twbookmark.com/books/63/0316294748/chapter_excerpt10134.html[/url] [COLOR=Blue] [FONT=Arial] Elson, an edgy man with a dark mien, was brought into the room, his hands and feet chained. [B]He is considered a maximum-security risk, and for good reason: a natural-born extortionist and killing machine, Elson is perhaps the most prolific hit man in Russian mob history, making Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, with nineteen acknowledged hits, a mere piker. Elson boasts one hundred confirmed kills, a figure the authorities don't dispute. [/B]With his dour-faced wife, Marina, Elson would allegedly go out on murderous rampages, rumbling around Brooklyn in the back of a van. After flinging open its doors, they would gleefully execute their shake-down victims, ÃÂ la Bonnie and Clyde.
"It was a sex thing," claims a Genovese goodfella who worked closely with Elson. "They got off on the withering bodies."
[B]Elson emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1978, claiming Jewish refugee status, and settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. His mission: to become the most legendary gangster of all time[/B]. "Nobody remembers the first man who walked on the moon," Elson explains. "Everybody remembers Al Capone."
Elson wore a drab brown prison uniform; his close-cropped hair, formerly thick and black, had thinned and turned salt-and-pepper like his mustache. His once handsomely roguish face was puffy and pale. Cyrillic letters were tattooed onto each finger, identifying him as a made man in the Russian mob.
When the last prison guard left the room, Elson, his hands unshackled, scooped me up in a bone-jarring Russian bear hug, kissing me on both cheeks. He was enormously strong. [B]Elson granted me an interview, in part, because my maternal grandfather was from Kishinev, Elson's home-town. "Oh, we have the same blood!" he said. "But it went in a different direction. I come from a different culture. I am a criminal. And for you this is bad: you were raised to believe in the law. What is good for you is not good for me. I am proud of what I am."[/B]
Elson suddenly started pulling off his shirt and pants. "Look here! Look here!" he shouted excitedly, showing off his battle trophies. Pointing to a crater from a dumdum bullet near his heart, he boasted, "It's still inside. And look at this: I was shot all over. It wasn't a joke. The pain in my arm from a shooting goes through me like electricity on wet and humid days. It really hurts."
Elson was most proud of a large tattoo that covered his right shoulder. It depicted an anguished-looking skeleton immersed in a vat of acid, desperately reaching up to grasp two angels hovering above. "In this world, a young man seeks a name," said Elson, laying out his bleak criminal philosophy. "When he has found a name, he seeks money. When he has found money, he seeks power. But when he has power, he doesn't wish to lose it." Elson has spent his career clawing over the corpses of his enemies, trying to reach the top rung of Russian organized crime ââ¬â a metaphorical place he calls the "warm spot."
MCC hadn't dampened Elson's egomania. He wanted to know what every wiseguy I interviewed had to say about him.
"You spoke to somebody about me?" Elson asked, playing with an empty plastic ashtray.
"Of course."
"Don't say to whom. But what did they say? Tell me description. Don't tell me who because I'll lose my patience."
"They say you're a hit man, professional, one of the best," I replied.
"Brave. Tough."
"Also cruel."
"Unforgiving," Elson added. "But fair or not? I never touched an innocent person. Or they said that I did? People say I don't have feelings, that I don't give a ****. It's not true. It's not true. First of all, if you don't have feelings you'd have to be a Hitler, or you'd have to be a Stalin. But when you lead the kind of criminal life where somebody wants to kill you, that somebody wants to take your warm spot. You cannot let them. I don't kill people for fun. That's not true . . ."
Elson suddenly became sullen, irritable; his mouth twisted into a tight sneer. "This place is like a mental institution," he moaned with disgust. Prison was eating into his soul, although he denied that he was having a hard time dealing with it. "I've been fighting since I was eleven years old. I'm a fighter. I'm not a punk."[/FONT][/COLOR]
2005-07-24 22:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]When they've got a book to sell, it's okay if they (not you) point out the Jews brought organized crime to America.
Once the book is off shelves and on remainder tables, only a hate-addled anti-Semite would refer to Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, Willie Bioff, Mickey Cohen, Lepke Buchalter, Jack Dragna etc etc as anything other than violin-playing candy-store owners forced into crime to keep lunatic Sicilians from garotting them for being a day late with their protection money.[/QUOTE]Of course it is also anti-semitism that makes us ignore the jewish role in organized crime. Poor Sidney - cast as a weakling when he's really a glorious Mafia enforcer.
Maybe its OK to mention they were gangsters, as long as you point out they were "good" gangsters, merely "playing what was dealt...trying to survive on the streets"".
Or maybe we should just keep our traps shut. What do we goys know?
2005-07-24 22:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]When they've got a book to sell, it's okay if they (not you) point out the [color=darkred]Jews brought organized crime to America[/color].
Once the book is off shelves and on remainder tables, only a hate-addled anti-Semite would refer to Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, Willie Bioff, Mickey Cohen, Lepke Buchalter, Jack Dragna etc etc as anything other than violin-playing candy-store owners forced into crime to keep lunatic Sicilians from garotting them for being a day late with their protection money.[/QUOTE] They also brought most of the unorganized crime here via there role in the slave trade.
2005-07-25 06:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]"Weak zhids" is a charade put up as a smokescreen relatively recently in history. They have always been predators, as history review easily proves.[/QUOTE]Yes, I don't know exactly where the image came from, but as in most images of the jews, its at least heavily influenced and probably basically determined by themselves.
If you to see a caricatural epiction of this "nice jew" phenom, see "Analyze This" Where Billy Crystal (jewish of course) plays a jewish psycholanalyst treating gangster Robert De Niro.
I think Freud and psychoanalyses stereotypes in fact have so influenced our depiction of jews than when another popular type of persona is established for jews (like the gangster Bugsy Siegel, etc.) it has to be softened absurbidly, and even then we are conditioned to think "this is not a real jew" just an individualist.