The murky underworld of Jewish gangsters is very much still alive and kicking
“I used to know quite a few Jews,” said my ex Darren not long after we started dating.
“Used to?” I laughed.
“Yeah. I think they’ve all met sticky ends now,” he answered. “You know my great-uncle Vinny?”
“The one who worked for the Krays, faked his own death and has been hiding in your aunty’s attic ever since?”
“Actually he’s planning a miraculous resurrection in October so he can see me off to Cambridge. But yeah, him. In the 1960s he worked with heaps of Jews.”
It makes sense. Darren comes from dirt-poor Irish stock who settled in south London in the 1930s. His great-uncle would have met plenty of Jews there. According to Rabbi Michael Binstock MBE, former director of the Jewish Prison Chaplaincy, the area used to have a “thriving Jewish community”.
Binstock is now chaplain at several other London slammers and happy to debunk the myth that Jews only get sent down for white-collar crime. “You name it, Jews have done it,” he said. “Right now, it’s mainly sex offenders and murderers.”
Netflix helped debunk this myth too when it dropped Adam Sandler’s latest flick, Uncut Gems, featuring a lowlife Jewish jeweller who’s hunted by Jewish loan sharks in contemporary New York. “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen modern Jewish gang culture on the screen,” said my friend Josh afterwards. “Until now we’ve only had the Meyer Wolfsheims and Alfie Solomons,” he remarked, referencing characters from The Great Gatsby and Peaky Blinders.
Just 48 hours later I found myself on the phone with a real-life Jewish gang member, An old school friend knows someone who knows someone who knows Lewi. Before we talk, on a withheld number, I’m told that my interviewee is “not a runner or a leader”.
At the start of our conversation Lewi describes what I look like and gives the name of a pub where I sometimes drink in London. Then I ask about his family. His mother’s a Russian Jew who came to the capital after the collapse of the USSR and has worked in a series of dead-end jobs ever since. He’s never met his father, so “being Jewish is the only identity I got”. Lewi doesn’t believe in God (“good job, really”) and he’s vague on Israel, saying he’s never been abroad.
So how does he express his identity? There's a prickling silence and then he says: “There was a rival I was supposed to deal with, but I warned him because he’s a Jew.” And then he adds that there can be tensions between him and the Muslims, who call him “a snake”.
When he's with a girl Lewi claims he's careful not to "do an Alfie", in other words get a minor pregnant (as with the case of Alfie Patten), adding that he plans to privately educate any children he might have. Yeah right, I think, but then my thoughts turn to my ex. He won a scholarship to a prestigious school and is now the first person in his family to go university. Darren’s not Jewish, but his story could be.
In our final minute, I ask Lewi if he ever worries about getting caught. “Nah,” he says, “got Jewish brains.”
By Leah Pennisi-Glaser
Header photos (L-R): Alfred Solomon, Benny 'Dopey' Fein, Meyer Harris 'Mickey' Cohen, Jack 'The Big Yid' Zelig
All names have been changed. This essay was runner-up for the 2020 JR Young Journalist Prize.
Read the other prize entries on the JR blog.