Tough Jews : Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams

Cohen persuasively achieves his objective by recounting the stories he heard from his father, who grew up with his friends (including broadcaster Larry King) at the end of the gangster era in Brooklyn, finding heroes in men like "Kid Twist" Reles and Bugsy Goldstein. The intriguing tales Cohen heard, although slightly embellished over time, offer a rare glimpse into a world that can barely be related to today's generation of Jews living in America. These Jews went to prison for committing violent felonies, not white-collar crimes, and got the chair for it. Inspired by their stories, Cohen went on to conduct extensive research through old journals, police records, and court reports to uncover the real stories behind the tales he heard as a boy.

Cohen warmly discusses his father's fascination with these powerful, charismatic figures, and openly envies his experiences at a time before Jewish people lived under the debilitating shadow of the Holocaust. In addition, Cohen shows compassion for the need of his father's generation to look up to "someone who gives them the illusion of strength." --Jeremy Storey

Product Description
In an L.A. delicatessen, a group of Brooklyn natives gets together to discuss basketball, boxing, the weather back east, and the Jewish gangsters of yesteryear. Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel. Louis Lepke, the self-effacing mastermind of Murder, Inc. Red Levine, the Orthodox hit man who refused to kill on the Sabbath. Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, who looked like a mama's boy but once buried a rival alive. These are just some of the vibrant, vicious characters Rich Cohen's father reminisced about and the author evokes so pungently in Tough Jews.

Tracing a generation of Jewish gangsters from the candy stores of Brownsville to the clubhouses of the Lower East Side--and, occasionally, to suites at the Waldorf--Cohen creates a densely anecdotal and gruesomely funny history of muscle, moxie, and money. Filled with fixers and schlammers, the squeal of tires and the rattle of gunfire, his book shatters stereotypes as deftly as its subjects once shattered kneecaps.

This could best be described as a cathartic history of Jewish gangsters. Cohen's frequent fawning over the Brooklyn mob of old, to tell you the truth, could be quite ridiculous. His adulation of Murder Inc. often spilled over into out and out hero worship. The author's frequent rationalizations for his adoration, however, are rather interesting for understanding the glamour of current-day gangs in poor neighborhoods.

I completely fail to understand the reason for the last chapter, which boils down the author telling the reader, "My dad can beat up your dad," and, "I know Larry King." The even less substantive epilogue does nothing aside from defend the validity of the work.

However, despite the scattershot, intrusive method of the author, the stories do themselves justice. The characters, history and anecdotes of the gangsters were a fun, light read.

This book is not designed for any significantly deep understanding of either criminals or criminology. I suppose it could be best described as a combination of "Dick and Jane" primer to the true crime genre and a bizarre, misguided attempt at inspirational literature for people not happy about being Jewish. I recommend either buying it in paperback form or just borrowing it from the library, as it is worth one read, but no more.


Great history, not great human interest   April 27, 2005
D. Greenberg (Suwanee, GA United States)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful

The book does what the title implies. It sheds light on an often neglected aspect of the Jewish-American immigrant story and shows early 20th century mobster culture was much more inclusive than it is often portrayed.
The author tries to create the background by paying homageto his dad and his friends (great pictures of a young Larry King with normal shoulders), law abiding aggressive business men who grew up with the legends of Arnold Rothstein and Meyer Lansky, emulating them like kids playing army. But in the end, the metaphor falls flat. The gangsters had no more impact on how their lives turned out than did their Brooklyn Dodger heroes.
The writing style often diverges into a very personal, chatty conversational style, an off-stage commentary on the historical goings-on. A little too colloquial for the subject matter, the asides were like a fleeting stomach ache amidst a great meal.


A Thought-Provoking, Enjoyable, Uneven Read   August 22, 1999
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Cohen's personalization of the subject makes the book's flaws easier to bear. I enjoyed his insights and deep emotional connection to the infamous characters whose exploits he describes.

Sometimes, Cohen's writing is just short of poetry, with beautiful passages challenging the reader to think deeply about the paradox of the Jewish Criminal. At other times, the book is so disjointed that I found myself having to reread passages to understand the transitions. I wonder about the editing process and why transitional material from section to section is so weak in an otherwise prosaic work.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this book for me, as the daughter of a "connected" Jewish mobster, and the niece of a known Jewish syndicate member, is the feeling I get that Cohen is trying to convince the reader that a tough Jew is reality. There's a disturbing bit of what seems like self-hatred in that Cohen refers several times to the Holocaust as though the slaughter of Jews was a sign of Jewish weakness. I don't agree with this in the least and find that it brings a contradictory and apologetic feel to the book.

Definitely worth a read, but I wish it had been edited better.


An Unfortunate (but colorful) chapter in American Jewish History.   December 31, 2006
B. Wolinsky (New York)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

Tough Jews is a book about Jewish gangsters, and how they pretty much faded after World War II. It leaves the reader to wonder exactly what created this phenomena and why it died out. The criminals whose stories Cohen tells, like Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Meyer Lansky, Kid Twist, Joe Amberg, were all products of harsh years. In this day and age, Jewish boys go to college. In the 20's and 30's it was much harder for Jews to go to college and have careers. It seems as though bootlegging and loan-sharking were a more attractive alternative to the rag trade. It seems as though Meyer Lansky slipped into crime because of a lack of opportunity, not necessarily greed. When his son said he wanted to be a gangster, Lansky replied "why would you want to do that when you can go to college!" With World War II, the GI Bill gave Jews the chance to go to college, and become doctors, lawyers, accountants, and....oh well, you know the rest!
It wasn't just poor opportunities that fostered the Jewish gangsters. Monk Eastman and Bugsy Siegel had emotional problems. Did Eastman have ADHD? His habits appear to be symptoms. Bugsy Siegel, a prolific rapist, had several characteristics that I see in kids in Special Ed. Shonder Burns, a Jewish Cleveland gangster (not mentioned in this book) may also have had "special" problems, along with an abusive childhood in Jewish orphanages. The Purple Gang of Detroit (also not mentioned) were a sick bunch. It's kind of hard to admire people like this. Then again, there was no Ritalin or Special Ed in those days, so a kid who couldn't do well in school was out of luck.
Cohen himself idolizes the Jewish gangsters, yet he admits that their world is gone. The Jews had left the Lower East Side by the 1950's, and the world of "Pretty" Amberg and Monk Eastman is long gone. Growing up, I admired gangsters. But when I asked my folks about the Jewish gangsters (rarely seen in the movies), nobody seemed to care. I guess Jews aren't proud of the Jewish gangs, any more than Italians are of Al Capone. Since Hollywood honchos like Meyer, Warner, and Goldwyn were all Jewish, they probably didn't want to draw attention to themselves with movies about gangsters named Abe and Mendy.
But maybe there is a reason why some of us admire these men. The Jewish people are often stereotyped as weak, cowardly, and timid, with an emphasis on intellect at the expense of the human body. Our history is one long parade of pogroms, expulsions, mass killings, and abuse, until 1948, when the Jews of Palestine defeated the Arab armies. It wasn't until the Israeli War of Independence that the Jews were seen as conquering heroes. Perhaps when you come from a persecuted nation, you admire those punch, kick, clobber, slash, burn, and strangle their way through life.


HORRIBLE!   November 21, 1999
Barry M. Buzzetti (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful

The author should be ashamed. Most stories are taken directly from Burton Turkus' 1950's book, "Murder Inc." An especially irritating practice of the author is that he precedes most of his stories with phrases such as "I can imagine Lefty...," or "I can picture him ..." The truth is, if he didn't read it in "Murder Inc.," he made it up. A last note, the mean streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where the author's father grew up and these stories supposedly originated, were then and are now, anything but mean.