Features
New book looks at the fight by law-abiding Jews to rein in the New York Jewish underworld in early 20th century
The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN For those readers who can remember the story of “The Untouchables,” the crime-fighting unit led by Elliot Ness, which was established by the Bureau of Prohibition in the US in the 1930s, tales of shoot-outs between courageous crime-fighting “good guys” and villainous underworld bootleggers and other assorted criminals would probably be thought of as something that wouldn’t have its origin in a Jewish-led crime-fighting unit established several years earlier.
But, would you believe that not too many years before the often bloody events that were depicted in “The Untouchables” came to pass there was another organization in New York City – led by Jewish crime fighters at that time, which had a somewhat tacit affiliation with the New York City Police Department, and whose purpose was to wage war on Jewish criminals on New York’s East Side? That organization was known as “The Incorruptibles” and the story how it came to be created is told in a fascinating new book, titled “The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld,” written by a New York crime reporter by the name of Dan Slater.
As someone who has long had a fascination with shady Jewish characters, I’ve come to realize over the years that a rollicking good story of a Jewish mobster, such as the close friendship a former Winnipegger by the name of Al Smiley had with the notorious Bugsy Siegel, about which Martin Zeilig wrote for The Jewish Post & News in March 2017, resonates with readers in ways that stories about more righteous Jews don’t.
While Martin’s story about Al Smiley was by no means the first story we’ve ever had about Jewish mobsters, a quick search of our online archive would lead you to numerous stories about Jewish gangsters and other assorted criminals.
In the summer of 2023 we ran two stories in relatively rapid succession that elicited a higher than usual amount of interest from readers. One was my review of a book called “Jukebox Empire,” about someone by the name of Wilf Rabin, who actually grew up in Morden, Manitoba. The other story was about bootlegger Bill Wolchock, written by Bill Redekopp, and which appeared in our 2023 Rosh Hashanah edition. Later, when I posted that story to our website it received so many views that I’ve returned it to our home page twice since. (You can now read that story if you missed it by reading it here: “Booze, Glorious Booze”
All this serves as a preamble to my review of “The Incorruptibles.” I have to couch what I’m about to write with an admission: As a youngster growing up in a sheltered environment, and attending the Talmud Torah, where all we were ever told about was Jewish “heroes,” and the only villains were Jews who didn’t lead properly observant lives, reading “The Incorruptibles” came as a real shock to my conception of how much Jews could be associated with the most sordid type of criminal activity.
It’s one thing to realize that many Jews were involved with bootlegging – something that has developed an almost romantic connotation over the years through books, movies and television programs, but to learn that in the latter part of the 19th century Jews in New York were in control of that city’s: prostitution (and most prostitutes were Jewish!); drugs (however, with the understanding that drugs, including heroin and cocaine, were legally available in the U.S. until 1907 and could be readily purchased in pharmacies); gambling; and protection rackets – does come as somewhat of a shock to a sheltered Winnipeg Jew.
Dan Slater’s depiction of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century is unremittingly harrowing. For the first part of the 20th century the lower East Side of New York was the most densely populated area on Earth. Housing conditions were horrible and the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants arriving yearly – beginning in the 1870s, from what was known as the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe – fleeing persecution and pogroms, found themselves being shunted into unspeakably barbaric working conditions in lower East Side factories, predominantly garment factories – owned by fellow Jews. (The author actually spends a considerable amount of time explaining how exactly the Pale of Settlement came into being and how sudden and incredibly violent wholesale persecution of hundreds of thousands of Jews could happen almost overnight – with the death of a particular czar, for instance.)
It was amidst this churning cesspool of a city that Jewish criminal activity of all sorts ran rampant. Two images from “The Incorruptibles” in particular haunted me. One was Slater’s explanation how so many young Russian Jewish women – most in their early or mid-teens, and only recently arrived in New York, were forced into prostitution. Many of these young women would go to a dance – looking to find some relief from the slave-like conditions that permeated the factories in which they worked. While at the dance, they would be approached by a young Jewish man who would offer them a drink. These guys, known in the colloquial as “Alphonses,” or, in Yiddish, as “schimchas,” would lace the girls’ drinks with drugs (a common occurrence to this day) and take the girls home, where they would rape them. But – now defiled, the girl could not possibly return to her family home out of shame; thus, tens of thousands of young Jewish women were forced into prostitution.
The other image that haunts me was the widespread practice of “horse poisoning.” Protection rackets have probably been around from time immemorial, but in this particular incarnation, criminals would confront business owners with a choice: Pay for “protection” or see your means of transportation (and remember, this was at a time when a horse-drawn buggy or carriage was the principal means of transportation) poisoned.
(There is actually a photo in “The Incorruptibles” of a horse lying dead on a New York street after it had been poisoned. Apparently it happened on a regular basis to the point where it didn’t draw much attention.)
While the book chronicles one sordid story after another so that the reader can understand just how tough life was on the lower East Side – often with reference to the colourful names of some of the most famous Jewish thugs who terrorized their fellow Jews, such as “Bald Jack Rose” or “Big Jack Zelig” (no relation to Martin Zelig – I checked), the biggest mobster of them all was the legendary Arnold Rothstein.
Rothstein is undoubtedly most famous for reputedly having fixed the 1919 World Series by bribing eight members of the Chicago White Sox, the overwhelming favourite to defeat the Cincinnati Reds, to throw the series. (It has never been proven absolutely conclusively that Rothstein did that, but as “The Incorruptibles” explains, the evidence points overwhelmingly in his direction.)
Rothstein was the kind of gambler who could lose $350,000 in a single night of playing poker – and not worry about it.
Here is an example of Slater’s ability to describe a character, when he sums up Arnold Rothstein: “Picture in one individual a sentimental and tender lover, a genial and humorous companion, a charitable giver, a loyal friend—and—a wholesale drug dealer, a crooked sports fixer, a welching gambler, a stolen securities fence, a rum-ring mastermind, a corrupter of police, a grafter through politics, a gunman, a judge-briber, a jury-tamperer, a blackmailer, a pool shark, a swindler.”
But, up against the villains of “The Incorruptibles,” Slater also depicts the stories of two very talented – and brave, young Jewish men, who were willing to challenge the criminal class: A lawyer by the name of Harry Newburger and Abe Shoenfeld, the son of a well-known New York reformer by the name of Mayer Shoenfeld.
As Slater explains, it was only when members of New York’s largely German-Jewish upper class began to take note of the horrid conditions in which the vast majority of the Eastern European Jews who had recently immigrated to America were living did an impetus to try and change things develop. Two men, Jacob Schiff (who is described as the J.P. Morgan of his day in terms of his vast wealth), and Felix Warburg, together with the rabbi of the leading temple of its day, Rabbi Judah Magnes of Temple Immanu-El, organized a group known as the “Kehilah.”
The Kehilah mandated Newburger and Shoenfeld to do whatever they deemed necessary to begin cleaning up the lower East Side. Of course, given how corrupt New York officials were at the time – under the control of the notorious Tammany Hall, led by “Big Jim Sullivan,” most of the New York City Police Department was also thoroughly under the control of criminals, which made the challenge set out for Newburger and Shoenfeld all the more difficult.
The book describes, sometimes in painful detail, the difficulties faced by the group assembled by Newburger and Shoenfeld, known, naturally, as “The Incorruptibles.” They weren’t above busting heads themselves, it turns out.
Again, one of the more interesting aspects of history to emerge from this book is that men would often switch sides at the drop of a hat – to go from violently attacking one particular group – at the behest of this or that mobster, to attacking the same group they were supposed to be defending the next day.
As has already been noted, the garment trade played a pivotal role in the development of New York City into becoming not only a magnet for immigrants, it also also played a prominent role in New York’s becoming the vast economic powerhouse that it is today. Slater notes that, at one point, 80 percent of all garments produced in the U.S. came from the lower East Side.
As workers began to organize themselves into unions, garment factory owners hired thugs, known as “shtarkers” (strong men) to beat up workers, occasionally to kill union organizers. In time though, the tide began to turn and, as unions gathered strength, the same tactics of violence and intimidation that had been used against workers began to be employed by unions – with workers who dared to cross picket lines (known colloquially as “scabs”) often being on the receiving end of that violence, occasionally ending with them being killed.
Newburger and Shoenfeld were thrust into the midst of this turmoil, trying to bring some peace to the labour disputes. Ironically, Mayer Shoenfeld (Abe’s father) was a longtime advocate for workers’ rights, but he would not talk to his son, who tried to straddle both worlds – of employers and employees.
“The Incorruptibles” describes the many battles fought to rein in the gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, and what became the illegal drug trade that were part and parcel of life on New York’s East Side. As the years went by, the Jewish dominance of the New York underworld gave way to the ascendance of the Italian mob. (Slater also acknowledges the roles that other groups also played in New York criminal activity, including the Irish), but his main focus is on Jewish criminals.
“The Incorruptibles” is a long and detailed book, drawing upon a great many different sources, and at times, the proliferation of names entering the scene can be more than a little confusing. But, for anyone who has an interest in reading something that peels back the layers of a very disturbing aspect of Jewish history that might not fit all that well with the notion of Jewish righteousness, then “The Incorruptibles” might be of interest.
“The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld”
By Dan Slater
432 pages
Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2024
Features
Rabbi Gary Zweig’s new book provides humorous and moving accounts of making minyans in unlikely circumstances
By MYRON LOVE The recitation of the kaddish is a central tenet of Jewish religious life. Even members of our community who are largely secular will likely recite the words of the kaddish for a parent, sibling or spouse at some point in their lives – even if only at the grave site.
The kaddish can only be recited publicly in the presence of a minyan – a gathering of ten (men in the Orthodox tradition. The number, as explained by Rabbi Gedalia (Gary Zweig), stems from the number of spies – as written in the Torah – whom Moshe rabbenu sent into the promised land and who came back with negative reports as compared to the two spies – one of whom was Joshua – who said that the land was flowing with milk and honey.
It is this challenge of putting together minyans for a mourner to recite the kaddish in different locales and circumstances – when a minyan in a shul is not possible – that is the subject of Zweig’a newly released book, “Kaddish Around the World” – a 90-plus page compilation of short stories – some humourous, some heartwarming – of successful efforts to recruit enough daveners for a kaddish minyan, ranging in time and space from a Super Bowl game in San Diego to the middle of a game reserve in South Africa to a Jewish museum in Cordoba in Spain – in a city largely devoid of Jews.
Zweig, who hails from Toronto, was in Winnipeg over Yom Tov to lead services – along with Toronto-based Chazan Manny Aptowitser – at the Chavurat Tefila Talmud Torah Synagogue. On the Tuesday just before Yom Kippur, the synagogue hosted an evening to provide the rabbi with a venue to discuss his new book – a sequel to his first book, “Living Kaddish,” which he released in 2007 (and has been translated into Russian and Spanish).
Zweig is one of the original Aish Hatorah-trained rabbis – having attained his smicha in 1982 from Rabbi Noah Weinberg, the founder of Aish Hatorah. He (Zweig) is much travelled, himself having led Yom Tov services in such exotic locales as Bermuda, Barbados and Curacao in the Caribbean, Mexico and Sweden.
Zweig noted that he was inspired to write “Living Kaddish” after his mother passed away in 2002 when, on one occasion, he was not able to find a minyan so that he could say kaddish.
In his presentation at the Chavurat Tefila, he observed that the first Jew to mention kaddish is purported to be Rueven – about 3,500 years ago – on the passing of his father, Yaacov (Israel). About 900 C.E., Zweig continued, kaddish became part of the liturgy and, 200 years later, was included in the siddur.
It is interesting, he noted, that kaddish is said not for the deceased, but, rather, the living. There is no mention of the Lord in the kaddish either. Kaddish is actually a prayer for hope and the future.
For a parent, one is required to say kaddish three times a day – morning, afternoon and evening – for 11 months. For a sibling, child (God forbid), relative or others, the requirement is just 30 days.
One of the stories in “Kaddish Around the World” tells of one of Zweig’s own experiences – after his father died in 20201 at the age of 101. The author happened to be at a family bar mitzvah in Orlando several months later. He fully expected that in a city with a Jewish population the size of Orlando, he wouldn’t have any trouble putting together a minyan for a Sunday morning. He felt even more confident when he noticed that an AMOR Rabbis convention was being held at the same hotel. On inquiring which sort of rabbis these were, he learned that AMOR stood for “Association of Messianic Rabbis”.
Come Sunday morning, most of the bar mitzvah guests had gone home. He could only muster eight for the minyan. He thought he could try the messianic group in the hope that some of them may have been born Jewish. Four of the group offered to help. A Chabad rabbi suggested that Zweig ascertain that each had two Jewish parents. Two qualified.
Zweig quoted one of the two messianic rabbis who said, after the service that ”this was the most moving service I have ever experienced.”
“Maybe Hashem brought me to that particular hotel at that particular time so that I could provide them with little spark of what Judaism is about,” Zweig said.
Another of the stories in the book concerns a shopkeeper in an American mall where many of the other store owners were also Jewish. The individual, Yossi, needed a minyan for mincha (the afternoon prayer) but couldn’t afford to close his business. He figured he could round up enough of the other store keepers to form a minyan. Everyone he approached was willing to come if he were to be the tenth. (In my own years organizing minyans, that was something I heard often enough – “call me if I will be the tenth”). Yossi’s solution was to assure each one he asked that, yes, he would be the tenth.
“Kaddish Around the World” is available on Amazon and also in digital ebook format and as an audio book.
In addition to being a rabbi and author, Zweig also is a singer/songwriter working in his own genre – Jewish rock and roll. He has a band called “The Kiddush Club,” and a CD called “TOYS.” In addition, he has recently launched a YouTube channel called “Living Kaddish”.
Features
The Gaza Peace Plan is not a Done Deal, but an Opening
By HENRY SREBRNIK (Oct. 23, 2025) The idea that Hamas will voluntarily disarm, that international forces will deploy in the Gaza Strip, and that the process of building a Palestinian government by people like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which a disarmed Hamas does not participate, are false hopes, if not fantasies. But does this mean U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan was useless? Of course not.
Trump understood the necessity of bringing the war to an end. But he also believed that endless debate among experts or, worse, historian and lawyers, would never produce an agreement. He presented an offer – actually, an ultimatum – to Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas that neither could refuse: immediate, unconditional and complete release of all hostages and missing persons, something the Israeli public longed for, in exchange for a final end to the war, which a humbled Hamas needed.
Two years of war has left Hamas weaker than it had been in decades. Israeli bombardments had shattered the group’s military capabilities and depleted its arsenals. In many neighborhoods, control had drifted to local clan networks and tribal councils. This hinted at something that could one day replace Hamas’s iron grip. To prevent this, Hamas has been ruthlessly murdering all potential rivals in the areas of Gaza it controls since the ceasefire went into effect.
Despite the severe degradation of its military capabilities during the war, Hamas still has more soldiers and weapons than all its rival factions in Gaza combined. Hamas has managed to redeploy approximately 7,000 militants to reassert control over the territory. They have publicized photographs and videos of their forces murdering and torturing; the victims include women and children.
The ceasefire is a temporary reprieve for Hamas: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it, hudna — a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad will arrive again. Hamas was established in 1987 and isn’t going to disappear.
In fact Hamas also says it expects an interim International Transitional Authority to hire 40,000 Hamas employees, and Hamas spokesman Basem Naim says he expects its fighters to be integrated into a post-transition Palestinian state.
Still, Trump has succeeded in ending the current war in Gaza, where Joe Biden failed. Biden’s national security team, drawn almost entirely from his supposed expert class, didn’t even see the crisis coming. Just five days before the attack, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had published an article in Foreign Affairs in which he wrote that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
Biden also had insulted the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, by publicly condemning the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And, of course, there was Biden’s poor relationship with Netanyahu, and his chronic inability to get the Israeli prime minister to do what he wanted.
By contrast, Trump returned to office with substantially more influence in both the Gulf and Israel, based on his first-term successes in the Middle East, especially the Abraham Accords (for which he’s never been praised by his political enemies).
Four Arab countries formally recognized Israel, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan and Morocco. The next stage was intended to include Saudi Arabia. One motive put forward by some analysts for the October 7 attacks was that they were intended to provoke Israel into a response that would derail Saudi Arabia’s admission.
Instead of sitting Israelis and Arabs in a room and expecting them to negotiate an outcome, Trump’s approach has been to exert leverage through other players in the region, especially, Egypt, Turkey, and – most importantly – Qatar.
In Jerusalem, they call Qatar “the spoiler state.” Israelis describe the emirate as two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the Qatari ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and several other senior figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.
The Qataris were shocked when Israeli jets on Sept. 9 conducted an airstrike in Doha targeting the leadership of Hamas. They then signed onto Trump’s peace plan at a meeting in New York Sept. 23, hosted by Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Ibn Hamad Al Thani, and attended by the leaders of eight Arab states, along with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Netanyahu was then browbeaten into accepting the plan (and also forced to apologize to the Emir for the airstrike). It was somewhat ironic that the airstrike made the peace plan possible. As well, Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June gave this negotiation some very sharp teeth.
“If you would rather leave peacemaking to the historians and diplomats, then you may wait a long time for wars to end,” suggested Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in an Oct. 15 Free Press article. His advice? Go to the “deal guys: They get the job done.”
In a sense, both Israel and Hamas had accomplished their goals. Israel had broken the Iranian axis of terror by eliminating Hezbollah and Hamas as a fighting force, along with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hamas had succeeded in luring Israel into a trap that led it to become hated and isolated around the world. This included the labelling of Israel as genocidal and the global call for a Palestinian state.
The rest of the 20-point peace plan will be addressed in a step-by-step fashion. Meanwhile, Israel must ensure that it retains freedom of action in Gaza, by decisive action against any attempt by Hamas to rebuild its army, its rockets, its battalions and its divisions.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Why Fitness Routines Fall Apart — and How to Rebuild Yours
Every spring, gyms see a flood of hopeful faces. New shoes, fresh playlists, unwavering intentions, by mid-summer? Half of them vanish into the fog of abandoned routines. The story repeats year after year until it starts to feel almost scripted. Why does enthusiasm evaporate? The easy answer involves willpower but that explanation misses the point. Habits don’t fail because people are weak. Life stress, boredom, and monotony ruin routines. Timely lever pulls can change narratives. The hardest part is persevering when motivation wanes.
Mistaking Motivation for Momentum
Most chase that opening surge, the lightning strike of motivation, but then stop searching once enthusiasm fizzles. A scroll through sites like PUR Pharma (pur-pharma.is/) or a glimpse of an influencer’s progress triggers a burst of action: new workout gear ordered, plans scribbled in planners destined for dusty drawers. Yet momentum fades when small setbacks pop up (a late meeting here, rainy weather there). Real progress comes from building systems stronger than any fleeting pep talk. Those who frame fitness as something owed to motivation end up back at square one every time life interrupts, which it always does.
Overcomplicating Everything
It’s tempting to turn wellness into a science fair project with spreadsheets and specialized equipment lined up on day one. This is the allure of complexity disguised as seriousness, a new diet paired with seven types of supplements and four color-coded bottles. Simplicity gets lost in the noise almost instantly. Most successful routines rely on two principles: keep it simple and keep showing up even when everything else is chaos outside those gym walls. Anyone insisting that perfection is required before taking step one has already constructed an excuse not to begin at all.
Forgetting Fun Completely
Who decided exercise must hurt or look like punishment? Somewhere along the line, fun got swapped out for grind culture and “no pain, no gain.” That isn’t just unappealing, it’s unsustainable over months or years. If sessions feel like torture devices borrowed from medieval times, nobody should be surprised when commitment falters fast. Seek activities that actually spark some joy or curiosity, a dance class instead of yet another treadmill session, maybe, or play a pickup game rather than slogging through solo circuits again and again.
Ignoring Recovery (and Reality)
Sleep deprivation, disguised as discipline, fools anyone, except perhaps uncritical Instagram followers. Ignoring recovery turns ambition into tiredness faster than any missed session. Because bodies break without rest, routines must breathe with owners. Cycling, real leisure, and honest self-checks regarding weekly goals build endurance, not continual pushing.
Conclusion
Change rarely arrives by force alone but usually grows quietly from patterns repeated imperfectly over time, even if last month looked nothing like this week so far. Drop the hunt for nonstop inspiration. Instead of breaking behaviors at the first hint of stress or boredom, build habits that last. People who rebuild methodically after every stumble or detour make progress, not those who peak and then fall.