5/4/23
Newsletter #326
The Crack of Dawn
Regarding, When Jews Go Bad, my sister suggested that I include the Purple Gang. I said that I already had brought them up in a couple of different contexts. She replied, “So?” I thought, “I can’t repeat myself: that’s my rule.” Then I thought, “I made the rule, I can break the rule. Besides, why are there any ‘rules’ at all? Well, there aren’t.” [And without a proof reader, there aren’t even any spelling or grammatical rules.]
When Jews Go Bad: In the 1920s and ‘30s the Purple Gang was a crime organization located here in Detroit, and was comprised primarily of Jews. Organized crime came into existence as a direct result of the government’s prohibition of alcohol. No matter what laws were enacted, most people were not going to stop drinking. And where there is a demand, there will be a supply, legal or not. The best and easiest place to smuggle liquor from Canada to the U.S. is Detroit for several reasons: it’s just across the Detroit River, there’s far too much shoreline to possibly patrol, in the winter the river freezes and you can safely drive across it, and finally, the Canadian Club factory (owned by Joseph Kennedy) was right there in Windsor, Ontario. You can see it. Therefore, during Prohibition (1920-1933), Detroit was the main entry point for booze being smuggled into America, which was instantly a multi-million dollar industry. No, the Jews were not in charge; the Italians were, led by Al Capone.
The biggest criminal organization in Detroit was the Purple Gang, run by the Bernstein brothers, Abe, Joe, Raymond, and Izzy. Among other things, the Purple Gang is fondly remembered as the first gang to make use of the Tommy gun for assassinations and executions. The Purple Gang may very well have invented the drive-by shooting. They were so vicious with their Tommy guns that Al Capone brought them into Chicago for the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (way, way back when killing seven people with automatic weapons was the worst crime ever committed in history). The Purple Gang extorted protection money out of all the delivery truck drivers in Detroit, including my grandfather who was a laundry truck driver (I suddenly hear Frankie Pentangeli saying, “They do violence in their grandmother’s neighborhood”).
In 2006 I was seated in the international terminal at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. I was reading a book as I awaited my flight to Sofia, Bulgaria to make (Stan Lee’s) Harpies (2007). A well-dressed, white haired gentleman in his 70s sat down beside me, and we began to chat pleasantly. I was reading The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (and they say pot destroys your memory. Ha!) and he and I began to discuss World War I. He was intelligent, well-spoken, and a pleasure to talk to. After 15 or 20 minutes I said, “Hi, I’m Josh Becker,” and put out my hand, “what’s your name?” His eyes widened and he straightened up. He looked at me incredulously and said, “You don’t know who I am?” I had no clue. I shook my head, “No.” He sighed, “Really? No idea?” I shook my head again, “No. Should I?” He said, “I’m Sam Bernstein.” Sam Bernstein was the biggest personal injury lawyer in Detroit. He said, “Do you have any idea how much money I spend on advertising?” I said, “I don’t watch much commercialized TV.” But his commercials were (and are) on all the time. He’s dead, but his firm lives on.
Sam Bernstein was Abe Bernstein, the leader of the Purple Gang’s, grandson. Sam’s father, Mandell, was also a lawyer, so he was the one who decided to switch sides.
They said in This is Spinal Tap (1984), “It’s a very fine line between clever and stupid.” It is also a very fine line between criminal and lawyer. In this case, one generation.
I never met my grandfather, Morris Berkowitz, the laundry truck driver who paid the Purple Gang protection money. He died in 1948 when my mother was 16 years old. There are very few extant photographs of the man. All three of them are black and white. Morris was stocky, had no neck, appeared strong and serious, and his upper lip sort of came to a point at the center, slightly protruding over his lower lip. It gave him a petulant look. This is the predominant male Berkowitz gene that I can see clearly in all three of his sons, and me. Every time I look in the mirror, somewhere in the murky depths of my brain a synapse fires saying, “Your lip looks like Morris Berkowitz’s lip.” Then another errant synapse fires, saying, “That again? How about shut the fuck up.”
I am proud to say that When Jews Go Bad is not a particularly deep subject, and I think I covered most of the highlights.
When Redd Foxx, who was a very funny fellow, was making his TV show, Sandford and Son, and he received a script that he felt wasn’t funny enough, he would holler, “Get me my Jews!”
All right, enough with Jews. Here’s the best Jewish joke I ever wrote. Why do Jewish men like to watch porno films backward? They like to see the whore give the man the money.
Indeed, it is the Crack of Dawn.