Most of the big names in American gangsterdom are all Italian. But according to University Professor Sol Gittleman, it was Jews who did the dirty work for such famous figures as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.
Gittleman gave a lecture entitled "Thugs and Pugs: Jewish Gangsters and Prizefighters" last night. The lecture, held at Hillel, was part of Chai Week 2006.
About 30 people comprised the audience, most of them students in Gittleman's class, Introduction to Yiddish Culture.
Gittleman traced the brief prominence of Jewish gangsters and boxers back to a generational revolution in the late 19th century.
In Europe, he said, Jews had a "ghetto mentality: 'Why am I poor, wretched and abused? It's God's will.'" The Jew, Gittleman said, was in such a position because he believed he should be. And at that time, he added, Jews rarely defended themselves.
They "just took it" when they were persecuted and beaten up.
But "in the late 19th century, we see the emergence of the image of the 'tough Jew,'" he said.
"All of a sudden, a generation of Jewish kids abandoned the Torah and turned to Marx instead," he said.
"They got out of the shtetl [Jewish neighborhood] and turned militant," he added.
Italians and Jews, he said, immigrated to the United States in great waves in the 1880s and 1890s.
"You have this extraordinary activity going on in New York City," Gittleman said. "A conflict between generations - every ethnic group that comes to America has a generational conflict."
Women, he added, were at the forefront of this conflict. He pointed to figures like Golda Meir, who would become the fourth prime minister of Israel; feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman; and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg.
All of these women, he said, were born to Orthodox families, and basically "told their fathers to go stuff it."
To get out of the ghetto, Gittleman said, Jews had several avenues from which to choose. "You could study your way out - that's the one they liked," he said.
But others chose differently: "You also could shoot your way out," he said, referring to those Jews who turned to crime, "or punch your way out," referring to those who chose prizefighting.
Italians, Gittleman said, decided to put the Irish out of business in organized crime.
"The Italians had the business sense," he said. "They organized a little subdivision called Murder Incorporated." And Murder Incorporated, he added, "was 100 percent Jewish."
"These guys were not nice people," Gittleman said. "They were Jewish sociopaths."
"You know why they called Bugsy Siegel 'Bugsy'?" he asked. "Because he was nuts."
These Jewish gangsters, he said, made a distinction "between being a Jew and observing Judaism. They boasted of being Jews. Judaism had nothing to do with it."
At the same time, Jews were prominent in the world of boxing.
"Between 1900 and 1923, there were 29 Jewish World Champions [in boxing]," Gittleman said.
He pointed to such great Jewish boxers as Max "Slapsie Maxie" Rosenblum and Charley Rosenberg.
"These Jews were small - they were lightweights, they were welterweights, they were bantamweights," he said.
However, Gittleman said, "it all ended rather quickly." Whereas Italians in the business of organized crime handed their positions down to their children, "the Jews got out of crime and [out] of boxing; they wanted respectability."
Gittleman said that Joe Lindsey, who was a hitman in the 1920's and 30's, later became a trustee at Brandeis.
"They pulled the shade down on that world, and it has been pretty much forgotten," he said.
