Wednesday, November 19 | 6:30 pm
Dan Slater’s The Incorruptibles takes us back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when Jews were prominent in crime. This was true in Great Britain, East Europe, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and especially the United States. There were important Jewish criminals and Jewish gangs in virtually every major American city, but their presence was especially heavy in the Jewish New York City neighborhoods of the Lower East Side in Manhattan and Brownsville – East New York in Brooklyn. Allen Street, in the heart of the Lower East Side ghetto, was famous for its many brothels.
Jews, whether individually or in gangs, were involved in prostitution, racketeering, robbery, and, in the case of Murder, Inc., even homicide. Jews were particularly prominent in bootlegging during Prohibition. Charles King Solomon (Boston), Longy Zwillman (Newark), Waxey Gordon (Philadelphia), Solly Weissman (Kansas City), and Moe Dalitz (Cleveland) dominated the liquor trade in their cities. Crime was an avenue of upward social mobility for American Jewish males, just as it had been for Irish and German Americans and would in the future be for Black and Latino Americans.
Ticket: $15