Rachel Swed
Reflection 3 of 5
Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community by: Jenna Weissman Joselit
(written in winter 1983)
In her book Our Gang: Jewish Crime and the New York Jewish Community, Jenna Weissman Joselit thoroughly discusses Jewish immigration. Throughout history, Jews were known for being law-abiding citizens. They were the most peaceful, and there was only a record of two murders that were committed by those who identified with the notoriously untroubling group in the past 250 years (1). However, as the number of immigrants kept increasing, Americans grew highly fearful that their country would soon be corrupted by criminals, pickpockets, and thieves. Nativist believed that the government was too lenient with their immigration policies, claiming there were more immigrants than Americans. In addition, there were a lot of disorders such as, an increase in crime, and the economy’s plummeting wealth. In the eyes of an anti-immigrant partisan, these deficiencies were held at the responsibility of immigrants because prior to the surge of incomers, Americans weren’t familiar with facing such issues. As a result, a coalition formed towards pushing legislative actions to establish quotas to limit the number of immigrants coming, more specifically Jewish people. However, even after they established the quota there was no proof that immigrants were the reason for the increase in crime. Nevertheless, the book goes on to describe how the Lexow Committee uncovered the criminal element of the Jewish community that ranged from different crimes of pickpocketing to prostitution (with or without the consent of the women) and gambling. The revelations of Jewish criminality startled many of the community, and this cast a horrible light on Jewish people. Once viewed as a group of high moral standing, the Jewish community was now seen as a corrupted group and were targets of discrimination and hatred. Continue reading “Jewish Immigration”
