Uncategorized
‘Married to the Mob,’ but under a chuppah: A new memoir details a Jewish family’s crime ties
(New York Jewish Week) — The Geiks weren’t your typical Bronx working-class Jewish family.
One brother ran a mob-protected trucking company in Manhattan’s Garment District. Another brother, an NYPD detective, chauffeured organized crime couriers around the city with illicit cash. Their kid sister visited a Las Vegas casino where the tween was set up with a couple of slot machines in a private room.
And a close family friend was sent up the river for killing a notorious Jewish gangster.
Meet the family whose close ties to Jewish gangsters are chronicled in “Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz,” a memoir just published by Alan Geik.
Dutch Schultz was the mob name of Arthur Flegenheimer, the Jewish bootlegger and numbers racket kingpin who left this mortal coil in October 1935 at the Palace Chop House in Newark. The triggermen were two Jews, members of the organized crime group Murder Inc. Mendy Weiss and Charles “Bug” Workman, the Uncle Charlie of the memoir’s title, did the hit.
Workman, who reportedly killed more than 20 people before pleading guilty to the murder of Dutch Schultz, was not a blood relative of author Alan Geik. But Workman grew up with Geik’s father on the Lower East Side and was so close to the Geik family he was considered an uncle. The author was in his 20s when he first met Workman, after the hitman was released from a New Jersey prison in 1964.
“I would never think of calling him anything but Uncle Charlie,” said Geik, 80, a retired TV producer and radio host who lives in Las Vegas.
In addition to diving deep into Workman’s story, the book also explores how Jewish mobsters and their hangers-on fought antisemitism, beat up Nazis and helped a fledgling Israel acquire arms for its War of Independence.
“These were people, from the first generation of Jews in America, who fought back against antisemitism in the streets,” Geik said. “Their parents fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe. They were not going to let it happen again and they didn’t.”
Geik’s book joins a crowded shelf of histories and memoirs of the Jewish mob, including “But He Was Good to His Mother: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters,” by Robert A. Rockaway, and “Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams,” by Rich Cohen. Like those books, Geik’s family history provides a sort of reverse image of typical Jewish immigrant stories: Instead of scrapping their way up from New York’s Jewish enclaves into retail and the professions, Geik’s family joined a criminal counterculture.
Alan Geik’s family’s close ties to Jewish gangsters are chronicled in a just-published memoir, “Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz.” (Sonador Publishing)
Books such as Geik’s “really put a personal experience to this whole world that we all know about, the world of New York mobsters,” said Larry Henry, author of a monthly column for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. “The public’s appetite for mob stories is insatiable.”
“Uncle Charlie Killed Dutch Schultz” describes a tangled family tree ripe with, well, rotten apples. Geik’s father, Lou, was not actually in the mob but did reap benefits from his ties with organized crime, Alan concedes. Lou Geik was one of several individuals who delivered mob cash to Workman’s family over 23 years.
“Uncle Charlie felt indebted to my father,” said Geik.
The author’s father is cited as a source for many of the anecdotes included in the memoir. Geik said that while his father’s business relied on mob protection, Lou Geik didn’t have “that extra whatever-it-took to be a really hardened criminal” — a trait, he said, his own older brother Bernard also lacked.
“My brother always wanted to be a gangland figure,” said Alan Geik. “So, instead my brother became a policeman.”
An ultimately very corrupt policeman. Bernard Geik joined the force in 1962 and resigned in 1971 after serving in the notorious Special Investigative Unit, which, as depicted in the book and the motion picture “Prince of the City,” devolved into an extortion ring. After resigning from the NYPD, Bernard Geik was arrested for bribery and bribe-taking in 1974. He reportedly pleaded guilty but served no time.
The disgraced detective went to work at his father’s trucking company. According to the author, his brother was one of the detectives provided by a supervisor to drive their Uncle George and other mobsters around town when they were transporting mob money in New York.
Uncle George Gordon was a real uncle. Gordon is allegedly one of the gangsters the actor George Raft modeled himself after for his roles in 1930s and ’40s crime melodramas. For decades, beginning at a casino and speakeasy near the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan, Gordon had a big hand in organized crime’s gambling operations, supervising enterprises in Florida, the Midwest, Las Vegas and Havana.
Alan Geik isn’t the only keeper of his family’s convoluted story. His sister Iris has her own memories of growing up mob-adjacent, such as when she and her parents were Gordon’s guests at the Stardust Hotel in Vegas when the mob was running its casino and skimming cash from the profits. Gordon wanted Lou Geik to work there.
According to Iris, Gordon posted a guard outside a private room in which she had been ensconced with a couple of slot machines. The 13-year-old was “mesmerized” by the slot machines. Her mother was initially unaware of what was going on.
“Uncle Charlie” Workman, seen in 1941, pled guilty to the 1935 murder of mobster Dutch Schultz and was given a life sentence. (NYPD)
“I was having a blast,” Iris Geik said. “I’ll never forget when the door flung open and my itty-bitty mother came in with a big guard behind her. She immediately made me stop [playing with the slot machine] and give back the money I had won.”
Iris Geik, now a privacy lawyer in the Boston area, has written hundreds of pages of her own memoir about the wives and girlfriends of the Jewish gangsters, tentatively titled, “The View From the Women’s Table.”
“Their lives were complex but they were also heimische Jewish women,” she said, using the Yiddish word for cozy and familiar. She and her father eloped because they were a mixed couple: Her mother Reba was a Sephardic Jew and her father was Ashkenazi.
Geik remembered that as a child she noticed a newspaper article about a family friend being arrested. She said, “Mom! Mom! Look, we’re famous.” To which her mother replied, “That’s infamous, dear.”
Geik said that on several occasions her mother observed: “There are no second-generation Jewish mobsters. Jews don’t make gangsters out of their children.”
Reba Geik had been involved in caring for two of Iris’ aunts who lived in Brooklyn while they were dying. Those acts of kindness had a profound impact on Uncle George, the casino supervisor.
After the aunts passed away, Gordon always stood when Reba entered a room, Iris said. “My mother was very honored by that because he was such a big shot.”
Throughout her life, Reba Geik remained close to Sylvia Lorber, a friend from her teenage years. Lorber was the only mob mistress her mother would spend time with, said Iris. Lorber was the paramour of two Jewish gangsters: Benny Kassop, the brother of Murder, Inc. gunman Sammy Kassop, and Sam “Red” Levine, an observant Jew who wore a kippah under his fedora. Levine won the affection of Lorber while the Kassop brothers were in Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison in Ossining, New York.
“Sylvia was a hell of a lot of fun but my mother worried about her,” Iris said. “Sylvia told me her stories, which were kind of glamorous when she was young but sad when she was older.” After spending 20 years with Levine, Lorber couldn’t attend his funeral. Sylvia Lorber stopped talking to Reba Geik in her last years.
Jewish gangsters do, on occasion, display some altruism in Alan Geik’s memoir. Take Moe Dalitz, the head of the Cleveland Syndicate. He was a major bootlegger during Prohibition whose flotillas of illegal liquor on the Great Lakes came to be known as The Little Jewish Navy. His family ran legitimate laundry businesses in Boston and Detroit. Too old to be drafted during World War II, he enlisted at the age of 42 and was commissioned as a lieutenant. Dalitz ran the military laundry service on New York’s Governor’s Island — but declined to bunk in the island’s barracks, opting instead to stay at a swanky hotel overlooking Central Park.
Then there was Johnny Eder, a major source for Geik’s narrative. Eder was part of the Lower East Side teenage crime crew that included Uncle Charlie and Uncle George. As an adult he was a major fence for stolen jewelry and always had a bag of stolen rings on him. Eder also had many connections at City Hall and in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.
According to Geik’s account, Eder was the mob’s representative to the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force in Palestine. Eder arranged meetings in the noisy kitchen of the Copacabana, a mob hangout, between Haganah agents and mobsters and others described as “former wartime U.S. intelligence agents” working to secure weapons for Israel’s War of Independence. (The late Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem’s longtime mayor, would tell a story about passing cash to an intermediary at the Copacabana, who brought the money to an Irish sea caption with a ship full of munitions bound for the Holy Land. The bagman, according to Kollek, was Frank Sinatra.)
Author Alan Geik’s father-in-law, Lou Lenart, left, and other fighter pilots in front of Avia-S-199 plane. Lenart was part of the group of men transporting surplus fighter planes and other weapons to the Holy Land for use in the War of Independence. (Courtesy of Boaz Dvir)
Alan Geik has a very personal connection to the creation of the Jewish state. His late wife Nina was the daughter of Lou Lenart, a World War II fighter pilot who served in the U.S. Marines. Geik’s memoir details how the elder Lenart was part of the group of men transporting surplus fighter planes and other weapons to Palestine for use in Israel’s War of Independence. Lenart’s story was featured in Nancy Spielberg’s 2014 documentary “Above and Beyond,” about the creation of the Israeli air force.
The story of how Jewish gangsters used some violent muscle against Nazi sympathizers in New York has been told before in historical accounts, but one episode in Geik’s memoir is particularly dramatic. A pair of Jews attended a Bund rally at Camp Siegfried on Long Island, a summer camp that taught Nazi ideology, and were offered a ride back to the city by a Nazi sympathizer who they ended up beating senseless in Brooklyn.
Alan Geik was not really hungry when he met Meyer Lansky at a Central Park hotel in the late 1950s. The gangster asked the 15-year-old nephew of George Gordon if he wanted a pastrami sandwich. Geik declined. Then Lansky, who struck Geik as an “older Jewish man who I knew was really powerful,” suggested that they split one. It was an offer that Geik did not refuse.
—
The post ‘Married to the Mob,’ but under a chuppah: A new memoir details a Jewish family’s crime ties appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
This David Schwimmer sweater ad is playing on ‘Friends’ nostalgia. So why are commenters talking about Israel?
David Schwimmer, who played Ross on Friends, is tapping into some late ’90s and early 2000s nostalgia as the star in an ad this week marketing his “dream sweater” for Quince, a clothing and home goods store.
In the ad, Schwimmer, who is Jewish, sketches the perfect red sweater in a notebook while he sits in Central Park and then begins to see it on everyone: a man riding an electric scooter, an angry taxi driver who almost runs into him, a beautiful woman riding in the back of the taxi, even a dog.
The gag is a reference to the Friends episode “The One with the Red Sweater,” where Ross’ on-again-off-again girlfriend Rachel is pregnant and has not told the father, whose identity is a mystery to the group; Joey, Monica and Phoebe know that the father left a red sweater at the apartment, so when Ross stops by and is relieved to find his sweater, they figure out he’s the dad-to-be.
“I’ve been looking for this for like a month,” he says, just after making a reference to the Yiddish-named snack, Mashuga Nuts.
The episode and the ad are apolitical. So why then are some people planning to cancel their Quince orders and boycott the company?
Schwimmer, many of the commenters on the ad are saying, is a Zionist.
“I don’t approve of you featuring a Zio in your ad,” one Instagram user commented. “Please do better.”
Schwimmer on Israel, antisemitism
Schwimmer has been outspoken about antisemitism since long before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Over the course of his career, he’s spoken at multiple Anti-Defamation League events and called for other people to stand against hate, routinely saying, “Silence is complicity.”
The actor appears to have never explicitly identified as a Zionist, and his statements have focused more on galvanizing support for Jews and Israelis — rather than on the Jewish state. But this is of little importance to his critics.
His relationship with the ADL, a staunchly pro-Israel organization, is damning enough for some. Schwimmer also starred in an Israeli commercial for Meitav, an investment management company. The move puts him at odds with the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which stands against any financial relationship with Israel or Israeli companies.
After Oct. 7, Schwimmer put out a statement calling the Hamas attack an “atrocity” and a “genocide,” adding that any attempt to justify what happened is “indefensible and antisemitic.” In the same statement, he also touched on Palestinian suffering:
“One can condemn Hamas and still object to the Israeli government’s policies regarding the occupation (as many Israelis do), still believe in the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and still mourn the loss of Palestinian civilians and the current destruction of their homes, schools, hospitals and places of worship.”
He’s also been vocal about sexual violence that occurred on Oct. 7, sharing the controversial New York Times piece headlined “Screams Without Words,” that investigated allegations of sexual assault committed by Hamas during the attack. Critics of the piece have questioned the validity of the reporting and argued that one of its reporters is biased toward Israel. The Times has stood by the piece.
Additionally, Schwimmer has criticized universities’ responses to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses that he said have veered into antisemitism.
Schwimmer spoke at a 2025 ADL summit about the backlash he’s gotten for his advocacy, noting that while he’s been “attacked” and “abandoned,” he’s found deep meaning in speaking out and has no plans to stop. He concluded his speech calling on fellow celebrities to do the same.
“You don’t have to say anything political,” Schwimmer said. “No one is asking you to solve the conflict in the Middle East. Just say that you stand with your Jewish friends, colleagues and neighbors against hatred and discrimination.”
The controversy isn’t bothering Quince.
“We’ve seen more than 8 million views across our social channels in the first 48 hours, alongside international press coverage and recognition from the marketing community for the creative,” said Dakota Isaacs, head of brand strategy and narrative, in an email to the Forward. “It’s been especially rewarding to see fans connect with the humor and nostalgia while discovering Quince.”
The post This David Schwimmer sweater ad is playing on ‘Friends’ nostalgia. So why are commenters talking about Israel? appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Why I urged my parents to avoid the counterprotest in Philadelphia
Parents usually tell their children whether they can go out, but last week, on a phone call with my parents, our roles reversed, and I urged them not to join a Philadelphia food crawl with their friends. The event was organized in response to a bicycle rally calling for the boycott of six restaurants, all Jewish-owned, to “show these zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are.”
The counterprotest intended to show solidarity with these businesses by patronizing and protecting them on the day of the protest, given the hostile framing of the boycott against the restaurants and their Jewish owners. However, I was concerned that it would be co-opted by pro-Israel partisans, who not only would instrumentalize it for their own agenda — one which, in my view, is actively detrimental to the fight against antisemitism — but would also stoke chaos and violence. It’s a film that’s played out time and again, including when I was an undergraduate at UCLA: A call is put out that Jews are under attack, counterprotesters mobilize in response, and anger quickly morphs into belligerence, hostility, and violence.
Fortunately, it appears that no one was seriously hurt during Sunday’s bike rally and counterprotest. As I had feared, though, some demonstrators became aggressive as verbal confrontations and scuffles broke out across Rittenhouse Square. While it’s likely that some of the pro-Israel demonstrators were there for the sole purpose of displaying that they are not “Jews with trembling knees,” others ostensibly were there because, as the names of two of the organizations behind it would suggest, they want to StopAntisemitism and EndJewHatred.
If those were the goals, the demonstration was an unmitigated disaster. And much of the discourse surrounding the boycott laid the groundwork for failure.
To many Jews, it may seem self-evident that the boycott was illegitimate and antisemitic. For the protesters, though, there seems to be a genuine inability to understand how it could be. They also seem unable or unwilling to condemn antisemitism.
Anger at the protesters is understandable, but if the goal is to stop antisemitism and end Jew hatred, it is important to address the root of the problem, which starts with understanding why the protesters might have such a profound misunderstanding of antisemitism.
For several decades, following the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Cold War period, pro-Israelism has been a core, essential feature of hegemonic anti-antisemitism advocacy. Groups like the ADL have made the phenomenon of so-called “new antisemitism” – a term that explains hostility toward Israel by claiming that the nation is maligned out of bigotry, as the proverbial Jew among the nations – a central focus of their work, especially in times of increased Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Though this is hardly “new,” the stakes and intensity of attacks against the “new antisemitism” have been raised in a post–Oct. 7, post–destruction of Gaza reality. In effect, this approach has been successful in as much as it has led to a public perception that the fight against antisemitism and the fight in defense of Israel are the same fight, and cannot be separated.
As a result, when anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian activists are accused of antisemitism or expected to condemn it, they view it as purely cynical — an attempt to delegitimize their movement rather than a true objection to how they have treated or spoken about Jews. This very refusal to condemn antisemitism is often read as itself antisemitic by many Jews. This “acrimonious circle,” as philosopher Brian Klug described it 13 years ago, could go on forever.
As the acrimonious circle spins and spins, there are a few options that groups fighting antisemitism can consider:
- They can continue pushing pro-Palestinian activists to see both condemning antisemitism and supporting Israel as intertwined moral duties.
- They can insist on that interconnection, but tell pro-Palestinian activists to choose combatting antisemitism no matter what their beliefs about Israel are.
- They can accept that pro-Palestinian activists will rarely condemn antisemitism at their own initiative, and deploy tactics of intimidation, bullying, harassment, and/or violence against them.
- They can accept that pro-Palestinian activists will rarely condemn antisemitism at their own initiative, and present condemning antisemitism as a human-rights oriented stance, in line with standing up for all marginalized people, including Palestinians.
The first option is the one that organizations like the ADL have often chosen. In its statement about the bike rally and boycott, the group said that criticism of Israeli government policies are acceptable, but discrimination is not. Criticisms that the ADL considers ipso facto discriminatory, however, include claims that Israel has committed the crimes of genocide and apartheid. As a result, activists lend the ADL and groups like it no credibility and will dismiss any of their condemnations out of hand.
The third option is what the protest on Sunday became. Any Philadelphian can tell you that a brawl in the middle of Rittenhouse Square during an Eagles game is far from unusual. But the fighting in this instance broke out because of the boycott — one side driven by a fervor that they needed to defend Jews facing an existential threat from anti-Zionists, the other driven by a fervor that they needed to bring justice to a city ravaged by what protesters believe are business-owning war criminals.
The second option is a sensible demand from a moral perspective. However, it is not a strategic one. The hard truth is that for many, though certainly not all, pro-Palestinian activists, the cause comes before all else, including standing up against antisemitism.
Therefore, the only way forward for Jews is the fourth option: to frame the fight against antisemitism as a fight for the rights of all people. This is not a perfect solution — no solution could be. There will always be some unwilling to oppose antisemitism no matter what tactic is deployed. However, it will make plain that there is no contradiction between condemning antisemitism and supporting Palestinian rights, that in fact the task is to support human rights universally and to condemn all who violate these rights. That necessarily includes standing against Israeli war crimes and its regime of inequality, and that includes condemning those who hold Jews as Jews complicit for Israel’s actions and condemning those who harass, intimidate, and scrutinize Jewish business owners for their presumed political stances.
My parents, fortunately, decided to remove themselves from the chaos of this day and went to support the targeted businesses as regular patrons on other days throughout the week. I was pleased to see that our rabbi, who leads one of the largest synagogues in Center City, made a point of trying to de-escalate tensions and confrontations from within the Philadelphia Jewish community, as well as highlighting the strength and vibrancy of Philly’s Jewish life on its own terms.
These are important, positive things we can do in the short term. That said, if we want long-term change to come from the pro-Palestinian movement – and I think this moment requires it – anti-antisemitism groups that cannot meet the moment must step aside and make room for those that are capable and prepared to frame the fight against antisemitism as a fight for, not against, fairness, justice, and equality for all.
The post Why I urged my parents to avoid the counterprotest in Philadelphia appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel’s government has approved a NIS 100 million ($31.5 million) plan, initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to strengthen Jewish education in North America, a statement from his office said Wednesday.
Based on a partnership and joint investment with North American Jewish communities, the goal of the plan is to strengthen Jewish identity and ties to Israel among the next generation of Diaspora Jews in the United States.
The approval of the plan, which was developed with representatives of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), follows a government decision made in June.
It comes a day after Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was sworn in and two weeks after a national election left Netanyahu facing a battle to stay in power as his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, received the mandate to form the next government.
It also comes amid signs of growing disaffection among Diaspora Jews, particularly younger generations, toward Israel and the Netanyahu-led government. Recent polls suggest that support for Israel among Diaspora Jews, especially in response to its policies in Gaza and on matters of democracy, is slipping.
A February survey of American Jews by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only one-third of American Jews aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, even as nearly nine in 10 say they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.
A separate Pew poll in May examining American views of Israel found that Jewish attitudes have shifted since 2024. The survey found that 83% of Jews view the Israeli people favorably, down from 89% in 2024, while 47% view the Israeli government favorably, compared with 54% in 2024.
“The plan we approved today, in partnership with Jewish communities in North America, is an investment in the future generation of Diaspora Jews. Together, we will strengthen Jewish identity, deepen the connection to Israel and ensure that our heritage and values are passed proudly from generation to generation,” Netanyahu said in the statement.
“The future of the Jewish people depends on our ability to ensure that future generations know their heritage, connect to their Jewish identity and maintain their deep ties to the State of Israel,” he said, adding that Israel would not “stand idly by in the face of challenges,” such as antisemitism.
Under the framework of the plan, which will focus on increasing the number of students enrolled in Jewish educational frameworks, the Israeli government allocation will be matched 50% with funding from Jewish Federations and other non-governmental sources.
JFNA said in a statement that it welcomed the Israeli cabinet’s decision to invest in Jewish education across the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “unprecedented partnership between the Government of Israel and North American Jewish communities to strengthen Jewish identity and ensure a vibrant future for the Jewish people.”
“We are proud to launch this historic partnership with the Government of Israel to expand access and grow enrollment in Jewish day schools across North America,” said Gary Torgow, chair of the Board of Jewish Federations of North America.
Eric D. Fingerhut, JFNA’s president and CEO, said the partnership “reflected the shared commitment of Israel and North American Jewry to strengthening Jewish identity and expanding educational opportunities for more families.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israel approves $31.5 million plan to strengthen Jewish education in North America appeared first on The Forward.
