JULY/AUGUST 2008 / MOMENT 43 BENNY GAMSON, AKA. Benny the Meat­ tacted Benny’s daughter Michelle. She told him ball, was short, squat and sharp-eyed. He was a that her father was said to have buried his sav­ small time mobster, a gonif, a petty thief and ings in a cigar box in a canyon in Los Angeles crapshooter who branched out into organized and to have given a safe deposit box key to his crime in the corrupt Los Angeles of the 1940s. wife. But when he was killed, Michelle’s moth­ In 1945, Benny had a run-in with a nattily er panicked and threw the key away. The dressed fellow mobster named Mickey Cohen. money was never found. After hammering Cohen senseless with a piece Michelle Gamson was four when he was of lead pipe, Benny teamed up with hitman slain. “My mother had told me he died in an George Levinson. But despite a cocked Mauser automobile accident going to get me a birth­ under the bed sheets, a .32 in the closet and day gift,” she says. It was her stepfather who two sawed-off shotguns, Benny and George later revealed the truth. “I was 19 when he told were gunned down Godfather-style at their me that there was a hit on my dad,” she Hollywood apartment on a hot August night. explains. “I wanted to contact Mickey Cohen Neighbors reported seeing a black car race but my mother said, ‘Don’t get involved, don’t from the scene. stir nothing up.’” The gangland slaying She remembers her father lovingly, as a “My mother had told remains unsolved to this “genius” who watches over her. “My father me he died in an day, but stories about was a very good man,” she says. “He was Benny were passed down never convicted.” automobile accident in hush-hush fashion through his family, final­ going to get me a ly reaching the ears of birthday gift...I was 19 Josh Gamson, Benny’s NOW THAT MANY DECADES have second cousin twice flown by, scholars, enthusiasts and even descen­ when my stepfather removed. “My father and dants are now happily stirring up the past to his sister had heard bits take a closer look at Jewish . The told me that there was and pieces,” says Gam­ savvy graduates of ’s street gangs, a hit on my dad.” son, 45. “Then someone mostly impoverished children of immigrants, doing research contacted joined the underworld of the Roaring Twen­ my aunt, mentioning a ties, becoming involved in shadowy dealings Benny, and it was confirmed that this was that—in addition to violent crime—included Benny ‘the Meatball.’” , gambling and bootlegging and, in A sociology professor at the University of a few cases, narcotics dealing. San Francisco, Gamson was intrigued to dis­ Those who rose to notoriety remain house­ cover a lawbreaker in the family. “I like collect­ hold names. Anyone familiar with the charac­ ing family lore,” he says. He read what he ter Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald's could, which was limited, since Benny wasn’t a novel The Great Gatsby, or Nathan Detroit in of the stature of, say, fellow Jews the Damon Runyon story, The Idyll of Miss , and Benjamin Sarah Brown (the basis of the musical Guys and “Bugsy” Siegel, who have inspired books, films Dolls), will recognize Arnold Rothstein. Bom and plays. (Benny the Meatball does make it in 1882, he has been called “the J.R Morgan into The Encyclopedia of and of the underworld” and is credited with paving CO figured in a 1948 movie, Jinx Money.) Josh the way for Jews in organized crime. A profes­ cc 0 Si Gamson searched for family members who had sional gambler who later turned to bootleg­ 1 E known his cousin. “Benny’s sister said that he ging, Rothstein transformed petty thievery t CD had a pharmacy,” says Gamson. “She referred into big business. According to Rich Cohen, d < CE Q. to him as a good boy. She said he was in the author of the 1998 book, Tough Jews: Fathers,

<3 z wrong place at the wrong time.” Sons and Gangster Dreams, Rothstein was one z CL o Gamson’s inquiries paid off when he con­ of the first to see Prohibition as a means to

44 JULY/AUGUST 2008 wealth and who “understood the truths of American Jewish history at Brandeis Universi­ early century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, ty. “On the other hand, had they been rabbis, greed) and came to dominate them.” Roth- scholars, doctors, lawyers, it would have been stein, best known as the man who fixed the more respectable. To be a gangster, especially 1919 World Series, was a rich man's son who one who got caught, was a shanda." showed young hoodlums of the Bowery how Now that the American gangster era is fod­ to have style. Indeed, Sicilian-American gang­ der for popular culture, the shanda element has ster “Lucky” Luciano would later say, Roth- nearly disappeared. “Gangsters may have been stein “taught me how to dress.” shocking at the time but today, several gener­ Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, boss of , ations later, they’re exotic,” says Sarna. That Inc., the gang of Jews and Italians that carried gangsters from previous generations are now out hundreds of , most of them to some extent pop icons should not be sur­ unsolved, on behalf of the mob, is often con­ prising. “America has always had a certain sidered the most ruthless. His colleagues in interest in oudaws,” he says, “and once they are crime included Arthur “” Fle- dead and the whole issue is history there is a genheimer, Irving “Waxey” Gordon, Abner certain excitement about it.” “Longy” Zwillman and Morris “Moe” Dalitz. In their time, gangsters operated with a cer­ As in other professions, Jews were noted for tain aura—real or imagined—of wealth, glam­ their intelligence, particularly Meyer Lansky. our and power, in contrast to the powerless feelings experienced by many Jewish immi­ “Lansky was a genius, a visionary, who built s o Las Vegas,” says Jonathan Sarna, professor of grants and later to the sense of victimhood o s

JULY/AUGUST 2008 / MOMENT 45 brought on by the Holocaust. “There were Although there are (and always will be) Jews Jews who said, ‘We’re oppressed and we need who stray into illegal territory, the storied era some tough Jews,”’ says Sarna. “People of the cigar-smoking, womanizing Jewish gang- admired them for being ‘alrightniks,’ for ‘mak­ ster-thugs packing heat has vanished. “For the ing it’ in America.” most part it was a one-generation phenome­ But generally gang­ non, distinguishing it from the Italian experi­ “At times the criminal sters produced more ence,” Sarna says. “There was no desire to see shame than security for the youngsters go into the family business.” ancestor almost their families. This shame has begun to becomes a folk hero: fade, however. “The THERE’S A CRIMINAL in every Jewish People feel, ‘I'm not like higher the grass on the family, according to author and genealogist grave, the less you feel Ron Arons, including his own. Arons, 52, has that but they’re making the responsibility,” says made it his job to help people who are curious Washington, DC foren­ to dig up information about shady ancestors. movies about him.’ sic psychiatrist Lise Van There are criminals whose sons became rab­ So they feel a sense of Susteren. “People lose bis and rabbis whose sons wound up as crimi­ the sense of outrage. nals. Arons’ great grandfather Isaac is among pride without the Also, there are no the latter. It all came to light when Arons inno­ longer people around cently set out to explore his forbears—search­ baggage.” who are suffering from ing through birth certificates, marriage licenses the criminal acts. At and death certificates—and turned up three dif­ times the criminal ferent birthplaces for Isaac. But what really cap­ ancestor almost becomes a folk hero: People tured his attention were criminal records, feel, ‘I’m not like that but they’re making which revealed that Isaac had been an inmate movies about him.’ So it’s a sense of pride with­ at Prison in Ossining, New York. out the baggage.” Arons’ parents had died before he learned Continued on page 58 46 JULY/AUGUST 2008 Continued from page 46 about Isaac, and he felt as though he had whom would qualify for senior discounts, Sharon Blumberg, whose grandfather, been “struck by a thunderbolt. I was how many knew of criminals in their past. Caiman Cooper, was executed at Sing raised as a goody two-shoes,” he says. Yet Roughly a third raised their hands. One Sing when she was six months old. On a looking back, he remembered a boyhood woman thrust both arms into the air and balmy April day in 1950, he and three incident that hinted at an errant ancestor. shouted, “Two! cronies had held up a Reader’s Digest While visiting his grandparents’ home in truck, stealing $40,000 and leaving a mes­ Brooklyn, he remarked lightly, “If I’m a senger to die from a bullet wound. bad boy today, I’ll have to go to Sing He remarked lightly, “If Although an insanity plea by Cooper, the Sing.” His grandmother pulled him aside I’m a bad boy today, I'll mastermind and lookout, proved unsuc­ and scolded, “Never say ‘Sing Sing’ in cessful, he managed to delay his execution front of your grandfather!” have to go to Sing for several years (considerably longer Arons went on to write The Jews of than fellow inmates Julius and Ethel Sing Sing and. give presentations on Sing.” His grandmother Rosenberg). One of his accomplices genealogy and Jewish gangsters. One pulled him aside and turned state’s witness and was sentenced Sunday afternoon last spring about 30 to 10 to 20 years; as for the others, says members of the Jewish Genealogical scolded, “Never say Blumberg, “three guys, all Jewish, all exe­ Society gathered for one such presenta­ cuted the same day.” tion in a lower level room at the Jewish ‘Sing Sing’ in front of In 2005, Blumberg heard Arons give a Community Center of Northern Vir­ talk about Jewish inmates at Sing Sing. She ginia. Arons—tall and ruddy-cheeked your grandfather!” already knew about her grandfather and was with short gray hair and a ready smile— anxious to fill in some holes. “It was a match spoke openly about his great grandfather. ARON’S VAST network of people made in heaven,” she says of the meeting. Arons then asked the audience, most of investigating their ancestors includes “Doing research has been good for me.”

58 JULY/AUGUST 2 0 0 8 Although close friends know about her racketeering. Arons, who pays attention He was arrested for the final time in grandfather, Blumberg says she doesn’t to these things, noticed that Fein had 1939. The poet , who bring the subject up at cocktail parties. corrected Cohen’s report that Dopey served time in a New York jail as a con­ However, she wishes it had been out in Benny was fatally shot in the back of a scientious objector in 1943, immortalized the open earlier within the family. “This police car. “A great deal of info on my Lepke in a 1976 poem, Memories of West kind of thing causes rifts,” she says. “It did grandfather, ‘Dopey Benny,’ is wrong, Street and Lepke. In it, he described his fel­ for my dad with his mother; he could such as when, where, and how he died,” low inmate Lepke as a “flabby, bald, never get to the bottom of it.” Her grand­ wrote Fein. His grandfather, he says, died lobotomized” czar who had a segregated mother divorced Cooper and, unable to from cancer and emphysema years after cell with “things forbidden to the com­ care for her son, sent him to an orphan­ going straight and becoming a tailor, a mon man” and who “drifted in a sheep­ age. “Being in the orphanage was difficult trade that he learned from his father. ish calm” waiting for his execution, which and being in the dark as an adult was still Fein says his father told him that did not occur until 1944. tough. Knowledge is power; silence is Dopey Benny denied ever having killed Kauvar grew up far from the West more damaging.” anyone. But his father did tell him that Street jail in Boulder, Colorado, where The family of 81-year-old Jules Orn- Dopey Benny used to show him a price another great uncle—Lepke’s half broth­ stein, unlike Blumberg’s, hid nothing list he kept in his pocket. “It was what he er—was a rabbi. He learned about Lepke from the kids. At Omstein’s bar mitzvah, for the first time when he attended college a cardboard box sat by the door of the in Denver. “I used to commute with a shul for friends and relatives to deposit At Omstein’s bar friend to Denver from Boulder,” he says. their guns upon entering. “Talk about mitzvah, a cardboard “On one of these rides, my friend said, gangsters was common in my family,” ‘Hey, I saw your uncle on TV last night.’” says Ornstein, who remembers sitting box sat by the door of WTiat the friend saw was an actor playing shiva for his cousin “Bugsy” Goldstein, an the role of Buchalter on the TV series, The operative in Murder, Inc., who died in the the shul for relatives to Untouchables. “I imagine his parents men­ after his buddy, Abe “Kid deposit their guns upon tioned the family connection to him,” says Twist” Reles, ratted him out to the Feds. Kauvar. “My guess is that people in the Ornstein’s father, a lawyer, had an entering. “Talk about community knew he was their rabbi’s half office near Times Square. “He installed brother but my sister and I had never a secure door and lock, which could be gangsters was common heard of him.” opened only by a button under his desk, Kauvar asked his mother about it because he had refused to represent in my family.” and was shocked to learn that the story some gangsters and he was afraid they was true. “My parents married at the would come to get him,” says Ornstein. would charge to break an arm, a leg, a height of the Depression in 1932,” he “I was six or seven and thought it was nose. His prices ranged from $50 to $60 says. “My mother told me, ‘He gave us exciting.” As an adult, Omstein’s fascina­ for broken bones up to $600 to break up $500 as a wedding present but we gave tion with criminals led him to purchase a picket line,” Fein says. it back, because it was blood money.’ an electric chair, complete with elec­ And that’s all she would ever say about trodes and head plate, from the state of him, other than that he was the black Nebraska after its Supreme Court out­ sheep of the family.” lawed executions. ONE OF THE PROUDEST of Lepke was one of 11 children, whose Unlike others Ron Arons has worked these baggage-free descendants may be siblings and half-siblings included a den­ with, Geoff Fein never sought him out or Gerald Kauvar. A “wanted” poster of tist and an Orthodox rabbi. He was the attended one of his workshops. Instead Kauvar’s grandfather’s half-brother, Louis only one who strayed, though his half- the two were brought together by a book “Lepke” Buchalter, the big boss of Mur­ brother offered to send him to college. review of Rich Cohen’s Tough Jews on der, Inc., hangs in his office at George Kauvar doesn’t sound the least per­ Amazon.com. Fein is the grandson of Washington University, where he teach­ turbed as he recounts this family story. In “Dopey Benny” Fein, a small time gang­ es about university presidencies. Kauvar perhaps the ultimate sign that the shanda ster who began his criminal career as a speculates that Lepke, known as one of of being related to a gangster has lost its pickpocket on the streets of ’s the most ruthless of all, turned to crime sting, Kauvar offhandedly mentions that , then graduated to labor for the thrill and easy money. he named his late poodle “Lepke.” ^

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