Gangster Generation: Crime, Jews and the Problem of Assimilation

"Gangster Generation: Crime, Jews, and the Problem of Assimilation" examines cultural representations of Jewish criminals over the course of the twentieth century. The essay seeks to demonstrate that for several successive generations following the mass immigration of Jews to the United States, these figures have been invoked and described as a kind of index to the possibility—and desirability—of Jewish assimilation into the American mainstream. Taking into its purview accounts of Jewish mobsters ranging from newspaper stories and nonfiction writing to memoir, movies, and a popular TV series, the essay shows that the Jewish gangster has proved to be a figure flexible enough to accommodate and reflect changes in the social position and the cultural needs of Jews in America.