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They Got Into Such Tsorres

They Got Into Such Tsorres:
The Jewish Mafia in America

Joshua Kirschenbaum
Sociology of the Mafia
June 10, 2003
Table of Contents

1. One Day in Manhattan

2. Introduction

3. Primordial Squalor

4. The Marketplace for Protection

5. Gambetta’s Theory Applied

6. A Shock to the System

7. The Animal Evolves

8. Paradigm Shift

9. How? Why?

10. Conclusion

They Got Into Such Tsorres

One Day in Manhattan
Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano first met in a chance but fateful encounter on the Lower East Side. The teenaged Meyer was walking down the street when he heard the screams of a woman from a nearby apartment. Rushing up the stairs and busting through the door, Lansky found Luciano in a rage, chasing a boy around the room while the young Sicilian’s girlfriend lay crying on the floor. Lucky, it turns out, had caught his girl in bed with Siegel, who had gotten himself into quite a mess for a twelve-year old. Lansky just happened to have a handy crowbar with him and promptly (valiantly?) attacked Luciano. Although the incident resulted in a court appearance, it was a most fortuitous event for the three delinquents, who became friends. They would later join forces to oversee the operations of the Syndicate, the confederation they set up to organize and coordinate American organized crime. Luciano was the emissary who brought Italian gangsters into concord with the Jews. Lanksy was his counterpart from the Jewish mob. Together, they would help build a criminal empire.

Introduction
There were Jews in America before the first signs or even antecedents of a Jewish mafia were visible. Today, millions of Jews reside in the U.S., but the Jewish mafia, descendants of Murder, Inc., no longer exists—not even a remnant. Yet from just before the turn of the twentieth century until well into the 1940’s, Jewish organized crime sprung up, grew, and prospered. Why and how did the Jewish underworld, so foreign an...