Tough Jews

Back in the twenties and thirties in Brooklyn, there lived a breed of men who now exist only in legend and in the memories of a few old-timers. These men were Jewish gangsters, fearless thugs who worked for their nicknames: Buggsy Goldstein, Kid Twist Reles, Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Growing up in Brownsville, they made their way from street fights to underworld power, becoming the execution squad for a national crime syndicate. They were known as Murder Inc., a corporation dealing in death, which did for organized crime what Henry Ford did for the automobile. Tough Jews is the first in-depth portrait of these men, a thrilling glimpse of street-level thugs, the muscle that made possible the success of gangster statesmen such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Lucky Luciano. Never before have these men been handled with such wit, a clear, comic eye that sees beyond the blood to encounter each gangster's matzo-ball heart. For Rich Cohen, who grew up in suburban Illinois in the 1980s taunted by the stereotype of Jews as book-reading, college-attending rule followers, the very idea of the Jewish gangster was a relief. The words "Jewish gangster" seemed to suggest an alternative, a future shot full of holes. For once, a Jew in jail did not have to mean white collar crime. Cohen learned about the gangsters from his father, Herb Cohen, author of You Can Negotiate Anything, and his father's friends from the old neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, including talk-show host Larry King. At breakfast, after touching on Jewish basketball stars and boxers, these men would speak of Jewish gangsters, corner boys who took grief from no one. Cohen, taken with his father's fixation on these elusive figures, has gone back -- interviewing survivors, prosecutors, and relatives, wading through police records and court reports -- to excavate the real stories behind the legends, the rise, the fall, and the mystery: Where did the tough Jews go?