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Amazon Prime doc details the wild life of Jewish gangster Myron Sugerman
(New York Jewish Week) — Mafia movies will have you believe that wise guys aren’t born, they’re made. But that wasn’t the case for Myron Sugerman, a second-generation Jewish gangster who is the subject of the new documentary, “Last Man Standing: The Chronicles of Myron Sugerman.”
Sugerman — who made his mark (and his money) by becoming, as he says in the film, the “godfather of the illegal slot machine business” — took up the mantle from his father, Barney “Sugie” Sugerman, who kept company with and served as a partner in the New Jersey Jewish mob alongside the likes of Abner “Longy” Zwillman, Joe “Doc” Stacher and Abe Green.
In his heyday, Sugie cavorted with the legendary mobster Meyer Lansky, as well as some other bold-faced names who made their money a little more honestly, like singers Perry Como and Tony Bennett.
“Our lives were basically in Newark and Manhattan,” Sugerman, 85, says in the documentary. “Tenth Avenue on the west side was Jukebox Row. From 42nd Street all the way up to 45th, 46th Street were all jukebox operators. I would go into the city in the afternoon after school, and on Friday nights we used to go to Madison Square Garden with all the fellas who worked for my father.”
Per Sugerman, his father “missed nothing” — he had his hand in everything from “bootlegging, boxing, fixing fights, thievery” to “jukeboxes, vending machines, pinball machines, slot machines,” all of which were either illegal or could be used as fronts in money laundering schemes.
But these Jewish mobsters could be called upon for nobler pursuits as well. In 1939, Newark was home to both large Jewish and German populations — Fritz Kuhn, leader of the American Nazi party, included. As Sugerman tells it, Kuhn and his cronies would follow their meetings and rallies with trips into Jewish neighborhoods where they would terrorize their residents. Together with the Jewish prize fighter Nat Arno, Sugie’s associate Longy Zwillman formed an association called The Minutemen, named after the New Englanders who took up arms against the British.
The Newark Minutemen would throw stink bombs into the halls where Nazis met. “As the Nazis came running out, our guys were like a gauntlet. They’re standing there with the monkey wrenches and baseball bats and brass knuckles. And they beat the s*** out of these Nazis,” as Sugerman tells it.
Sugerman’s version of these stories might be lost to time if it weren’t for director Jonny Caplan and his production company Tech Talk Media. Released last January — and now available to stream on Amazon Prime — Caplan’s film features extensive interviews with Sugerman himself, a character who might remind you of your own Jewish grandfather — and also the guy who keeps putting the fix on the temple’s bingo game.
In a recent Zoom interview, Caplan told the New York Jewish Week that he was “kind of blown away” when he first heard Sugerman’s story, courtesy of a colleague who was helping Sugerman with his 2019 memoir, “The Chronicles of The Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron.”
Later Caplan watched Sugerman’s interviews online. “He’s just such an amazing character that I fell in love with,” Caplan said. Although Tech Talk mostly covers the world of innovation — previous productions include documentaries about flying taxis and “robots that look after the elderly” — Caplan said they couldn’t resist bringing Sugerman’s story to life.
Born in 1938, Sugerman took up the family business at the age of 21, following his graduation from Bucknell University. Fluent in six languages (seven, if you count profanity, as Sugerman says in the documentary), he was given $3,000 in travelers checks by his father and sent off to Europe to start an “export business.” Sugerman hit a number of countries on the Continent, all while building his reputation and ability to sell pinball machines, slot machines and arcade equipment.
Eventually, Sugerman’s specialty would become Bally Bingo pinball machines, an addictive, “dynamite” arcade game that attracted gamblers and operators who handed out prizes. After its interstate shipment was banned in the United States in 1963, Sugerman would buy parts from all over the country in order to get the machines assembled. “I was the biggest contrabandist and bootlegger of Bally Bingo machines across the states,” he recalls in the documentary. Those efforts got him named in three state cases and three federal cases for illegal gambling and organized crime. And yes, he did serve jail time.
In a highlight of the documentary, Sugmeran is eventually connected with the famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Five years after the capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, Sugerman happened to find himself in Vienna. Feeling galvanized by the successful hunt for the man who drew up the plans for the Holocaust, Sugerman knocked on Wiesenthal’s door and asked how he could be of service. The answer, like so many other things in life, was money.
Myron Sugerman, right, meets with famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in New York City in an undated photograph. Sugerman says he “sent very generous amounts of money” to help Wiesenthal hunt down war criminals. (Myron Sugerman/Impossible Media LLC)
“I was religious every week — we sent very generous amounts of money to Wiesenthal,” Sugerman says in the film. The pair struck up a friendship, and with each trip Wiesenthal took to New York City, Sugerman says Wiesenthal’s first call was to him. Eventually, prior to one of Sugerman’s trips to Asuncion, Paraguay, Wiesenthal asked the contrabandist to get him information regarding the whereabouts of notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who was rumored to have decamped there. I don’t want to give too much away, but if you enjoyed seeing Nazis killed in the film “Inglourious Basterds,” you might like how this story ends.
Sugerman provides details of his life, confessional style, as he leads the camera crew to local haunts in Little Italy and Brooklyn’s Kings Highway. Along the way, he meets friends who help him tell his tales of the old days, like “Baby John” Delutro, also known as “The Cannoli King,” and Johnny Chinatown, who points out a Chinatown landmark seen in “The Godfather.” Both are 20-plus years Sugerman’s junior, but still have ties to the Mafia life he knows and loves. (Those old days might be gone, but the incredible nicknames persist.)
At Grill Point, a now-shuttered kosher restaurant in Brooklyn, we see Sugerman chatting with Moishe Peretz, a retired mob boss who calmly recalls getting shot in the chest in 2016.
Though the mob plays a central role in Sugerman’s identity, his Jewish bona fides are just as significant. “The Jewish gangster really had a need, a psychological need, to show that the Jews could be just as tough as any other ethnicity, because they were going to break with the 2,000 years of our heads down, living in the ghetto, living fearful,” he says in the film. “There was definitely no identity crisis. These Jews were tough and ready to prove it.”
These days, Sugerman lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife, Clara. Though his life may be quieter now, his sense of humor and joie de vivre endure, and now as much as ever he’s committed to the work of defending the Jewish people. “Most guys at 85 years of age, if they’re lucky to be alive, are sitting in front of a lawn of grass, watching the grass grow,” he told the New York Jewish Week. “But I’m not comfortable — I’m not comfortable when the hair on the head of a Jew is moved out of place by an antisemite.”
To that end, Sugerman is putting together an organization with the goal of promoting Jewish pride — and he encourages all those interested in joining to reach out via his website.
More than anything, the toughness and tenacity of the Jewish people is a message that Sugerman wants to continue to send today. “That the era of bending your head, that the era of dismissing antisemitism as a mosquito on the tuchus of an elephant is over with,” he said.
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The post Amazon Prime doc details the wild life of Jewish gangster Myron Sugerman appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Hezbollah Plotting to Attack Israel From Syria, Report Says, as Fears Grow of Wider Middle East War
Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon, March 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Hezbollah is reportedly seeking to launch attacks against the Jewish state from Syrian territory in support of Iran while continuing operations along the Lebanese border, fueling fears the Middle East war is escalating and expanding across multiple fronts.
According to Israeli broadcaster Kan News, which cited Arab intelligence sources, the Syrian government has instructed its military forces to prevent any terrorist cells operating in Syria from launching attacks against Israel, amid Iran’s broader regional confrontation with Israel and the United States.
As Hezbollah vowed to support Iran in its broader confrontation with Israeli and American forces by targeting the Jewish state, Damascus has reportedly strengthened security controls in southern Syria, setting up checkpoints in an effort to prevent any cross-border attacks or terrorist operations from taking shape.
Although Iran and its terrorist proxies were expelled from Syria after the fall of long-time Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the new Syrian government under President Ahmed al‑Sharaa has continued to focus on dismantling the infrastructure that Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies built on the Syrian side of the border.
According to media reports, Damascus is also preparing to potentially target the positions of Hezbollah along the border in the Bekaa Valley, a region in eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border, in an effort to weaken the group’s operational infrastructure.
However, Syrian leadership has said it has no plans to conduct military operations against any neighboring country, reiterating that its military deployments are aimed strictly at securing borders and maintaining internal stability.
“But Syria is prepared to deal with any security threat to itself or its partners,” a security official told the Times of Israel.
As the war continues to escalate across the region, Syria has further strengthened its border with Lebanon by deploying thousands of troops, including infantry units, armored vehicles, and short-range rocket launchers, in an effort to curb arms and drug smuggling while preventing infiltration by Hezbollah or other terrorist groups.
After Hezbollah fired multiple rockets into Israeli territory in support of Iran earlier this week, the Jewish state launched a wave of airstrikes across southern and central Lebanon, striking sites linked to the group’s military infrastructure.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it killed the commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, calling the operation a major blow to the Iran-backed terrorist group’s capabilities.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that he had authorized the military to advance and take control of additional positions in Lebanon, where Israeli troops have held several hilltops since a war with Hezbollah in 2024.
With dozens of people killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes, Hezbollah’s move to enter the conflict has sharpened long-standing divisions in Lebanon over its status as an armed group – the only Lebanese faction to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war.
The Lebanese government has even taken the unprecedented step of banning the military activities of Hezbollah. The pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar condemned the decision as a “capitulation to dictates,” warning that it could potentially spark the outbreak of civil war.
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Florida International University College Republicans Denounce Antisemitic, Racist WhatsApp Group
Conservative youth at Turning Point USA event in October 2025. Photo: Cheney Orr via Reuters Connect
The Florida International University (FIU) chapter of College Republicans, one of the largest conservative student groups in the US, has condemned antisemitism and other forms of bigotry following the revelation of a virulently racist group chat in which conservative youth exchanged antisemitic slurs while calling for the of murder African Americans.
“As the first female Jewish president of FIU College Republicans, I can personally attest that the recent reports regarding an external chat have no place in our society,” Gabriela Burstein said in a blistering statement condemning the chat, which reportedly included members of her College Republicans chapter.
“There is simply no place for antisemitism, racism, or violence of any kind and in no way reflect our conservative community within Florida,” she continued. “Our executive board, chapter members, community supporters, and I are absolutely appalled by the rhetoric that has surfaced.
As first reported by The Miami Herald, the group chat, created on WhatsApp, was described by its members as “Nazi heaven” for the daily barrage of extremist comments contributed to it. Individuals affiliated with the Miami Dade Country Republicans, Turning Point USA, and College Republicans casually said “ni—er,” denounced women as “whores,” and spoke rapturously about Adolf Hitler.
Dariel Gonzalez, according to the Herald, was one of the chat’s most prolific contributors, bandying about comments regarding “color professors” and telling members that “You can f—k all the k—kes you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.” Gonzalez, a former board member of FIU’s College Republicans, also reportedly promoted belief in “Agartha,” a Nazi utopia confected by Heinrich Himmler, while fantasizing about the possibility of engaging in onanism there. Some vile remarks drew the approbation of other chat members, many of whom are connected to Republican Party organizations across the state.
The Herald added that the chat was founded by Abel Alexander Carvajal, secretary of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party. On Thursday, the organization denounced him and the chat, adding that it has demanded his resignation.
“His words and actions are reprehensible and are completely inconsistent with the values of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County. The words and actions of this individual do not speak for our party,” chairman Kevin Cooper said in a statement. “We are the party that fought to end slavery, the party that welcomed Cuban refugees fleeing communism to freedom in Miami, and the party that continues to welcome Americans of every race, faith, gender, and nationality who believe in liberty and opportunity.”
FIU president Jeanette Nuñez described the content of the group chat as “abhorrent and extremely disturbing language” in her own statement.
“FIU does not and will not tolerate violence, hate, discrimination, harassment, racism or antisemitism. This is not who we are. This is not what FIU stands for,” she added. “We take these allegations very seriously. The alleged conduct continues to be investigated by FIU Police Department in coordination with local, state, and federal law enforcement. In addition, the FIU Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity are actively investigating the matter.”
The group chat’s exposure comes at a time when, according to recent polling, young Republicans have increasingly embraced antisemitism and conspiracy theories.
Last month, for example, survey by Irwin Mansdorf, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, and Charles Jacobs, president of the Jewish Leadership Project, found that 45 percent of Republicans under the age of 44 said Jews pose a threat to the “American way of life.”
In December, the Manhattan Institute, a prominent US-based think tank, released a major poll showing that younger Republican voters are much less supportive of Israel and more likely to express antisemitic views than their older cohorts.
According to the data, 25 percent of Republicans under 50 openly express antisemitic views as opposed to just 4 percent over the age of 50.
Startlingly, a substantial amount, 37 percent, of GOP voters indicate belief in Holocaust denialism. These figures are more pronounced among young men under 50, with a majority, 54 percent, agreeing that the Holocaust “was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.” Among men over 50, 41 percent agree with the sentiment.
This dynamic has played out on college and university campuses across the US, where antisemitism has surged in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The Algemeiner has reported daily on campus antisemitism incidents which involved identity-based physical assaults, verbal abuse, and others acts of discrimination. These included anti-Zionists spitting on Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley while calling them “Jew”; gang assaults at Columbia University’s Butler Library; swastika graffiti; the desecration of Jewish religious symbols; and the expulsion of a sexual assault survivor from a victim support group over her support for Zionism.
Other incidents include a faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic political cartoon which marked Jews and Israel as enemies of people of color; a Cornell University student threatening to murder Jewish men, whom he called pigs, and to rape Jewish women, and perpetrate a mass shooting at the campus’ kosher dining hall; and professors praising Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, which included mass murder, sexual assault, and kidnapping as legitimate modes of “resistance.”
Many such incidents preceded the Oct. 7 massacre by several years and received little to no coverage in the mainstream press.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Chef Eitan Bernath Sets New Guinness World Record for Making Largest Matzah Ball Soup
Eitan Bernath set a new Guinness World Record for making the largest serving of matzah ball soup on Feb. 27, 2026. Photo: Eric Vitale
Jewish chef and cookbook author Eitan Bernath recently set a new Guinness World Record for making the largest serving of matzah ball soup.
The matzah ball soup weighed in at 1,356.9 pounds and was verified by Guinness World Records in Brooklyn, New York, on Feb. 27. The soup contained 847 hand-rolled matzah balls, and it took 10 chefs about 11 hours to prepare the soup, according to the Guinness World Records. All the soup was donated to City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, which will serve it to thousands of hungry New Yorkers in food pantries and soup kitchens.
“There’s no food that brings back more memories of being surrounded by family than matzo ball soup,” Bernath, 23, told The Algemeiner in a statement. “So, when I set out to make the world’s largest version of a dish, choosing matzo ball soup was a no-brainer. Every bowl is a bowl of comfort. Being able to create a giant version was both an incredible challenge and a thrill. It meant even more to me that after setting the record, we were able to donate all the soup to New Yorkers in need — sharing the comfort of matzo ball soup even further.”
Bernath — who is also a social media content creator and the principal culinary contributor for “The Drew Barrymore Show” — said the matzah ball soup was comprised of 120 chickens, 300 carrots, and 250 bunches of herbs. The soup also included parsnip, turnip, celery root, onions, parsley, dill, paprika, and salt. Bernath used ChatGPT to scale up his grandmother’s matzo ball soup recipe to a 200-gallon version, and to help him also find the right vessels needed to make such a large portion. To hold more than 160 gallons of hot liquid, he ended up using a water trough, typically used for horses, which was lined with a food-grade liner.
On Instagram, Bernath shared behind-the-scenes photos that show the making of the massive matzah ball soup. In the caption, he explained that creating the record-breaking dish “was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.”
“As a proud Jew, creating a record-setting giant version of such an important Jewish dish meant the world to me,” he added. “I couldn’t be prouder of my team and I for pulling this off. I will never look at a bowl of matzo ball soup the same again!!”