"Top Russian Mafiosi from Russia,
Europe, and the United States,
convened in Israel three
times between 1993 and
1994 to decide upon their investment policies
and to settle
disputes."
--
Alan
Block, 1996, p. 33]
"The
element of trust is vital in
the diamond trade, and religious
orthodoxy, curiously enough,
is often regarded as the
ultimate guarantee of a Jew's honesty."
-- Howard Sachar, 1985, p. 47]
"The Prohibition
Act of 1920 allowed every American
family up to ten
gallons of wine annually for
religious or 'sacramental' purposes.
Jews
used wine in the synagogue and
at home for celebrating the
Sabbath
and Jewish festivals. According
to the law, members of the clergy
could request
allotments of wine for their
congregants. A number of local
rabbis exploited
the sacramental wine privilege
and supplemented their meager
incomes
by producing wine in their cellars
and bathtubs for sale in the
marketplace."
--Robert
Rockaway, 2001, p. 113-
"I can't believe it. A rabbi
stole my money. A rabbi stole
my money."
-- comments of prominent
Jewish American mobster Joseph
"Doc" Stacher, arrested over the years
for "atrocious assault
and
battery, robbery, burglary,
larceny, bootlegging, hijacking
and murder," then an
Israeli citizen after being
deported from
America
in 1965. These comments were
made upon winning a
lawsuit
after being swindled by Rabbi
Menachem Porush of the
ultra-Orthodox
Agudat Israel Party. [ROCKAWAY,
R., 1993,
p.
116-117)
22
DRUGS
AND DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING
WITHIN JEWISH NETWORKS: THE
‘RUSSIAN MAFIA,' 'ULTRA-ORTHODOX' CORRUPTION,
AND OTHER CRIMINALS
Jews in
America have been prominent
in the narcotics underworld
since the early twentieth century.
As Rich Cohen notes:
"The first major
American drug dealer was probably
Arnold Rothstein
... [COHEN,
R., 1999, p. 131]
... In the mid-nineteenth
century, when
the government
started to ban certain narcotics,
drugs were smuggled
in from
Europe and the Far East. But
it was a slapdash affair --
not a
business.
Rothstein changed all that.
He saw Repeal coming and knew
drugs
could fill the void left by
alcohol ... So in the late [19]
twenties
Rothstein
retooled a mechanism he had
built to carry booze. It would
now carry,
among other things, heroin and
cocaine ... [It became] a
blueprint
for smuggling drugs into America."
[COHEN, R., p. 132]
"By 1926," notes
Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway,
"[Rothstein] was allegedly
the overlord of the foreign
narcotics trade
in America. Beginning
with Rothstein, American Jewish
underworld
figures became prominently
involved in smuggling and distributing
opium and opiates
in the United States. During
the 1920s and 1930s
Jews competed with
Italians for dominance of the
trade. The Italian-
American's racketeering
predominated during World War
II. This
was because of the
Nazis. When the Germans began
to exterminate
European Jewry, they
also destroyed the Jewish criminals
who
supplied American
distributors." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p. 8]
Rothstein's right-hand man was
Louis Lepke, who took over the
drug empire when his boss died
in 1928. In the 1930s associate
Yasha Katzenberg journeyed to
Shanghai, China, contacted underworld
figures there, and "taught them
how to make heroin." "In the last thirties," says Cohen,
"when officials at last figured
out what Katzenberg was up to,
the League of Nations declared
him an international menace.
A few years later Yasha was
indicted, along with Lepke and
twenty-eight others, for violation
of narcotics laws." [COHEN,
R., p. 133-134]
In the late 1940s, there
were still "dozens of Jewish
drug dealers roaming New York
City, the remnants of Rothstein's
machine." [COHEN, p. 139] Particularly
noteworthy were Solly Gelb,
Solly Gordon, Tudi Schoenfeld,
Artie West, Niggy Rutkin, Harry
Koch, Sam Haas, Moe Taubman
and Harry Hechinger. Tolly Greenberg
even invented a machine to turn
liquid heroin into pill form.
[COHEN, p. 139-140] Harry Strauss,
"Philadelphia's gambling czar,"
later became involved in smuggling
"heroin into the United States
from France. He reportedly earned
$20 million a year from the
trade." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993,
p. 33-34]
An
important foundation of the
old opium trade was the Jewish
Sassoon family (of which famous
hair mogul Vidal Sassoon is
an heir):
"The
legend of the Jewish clan can
be traced back to David Sassoon
(1792-
1864).
Born into a Sephardic Jewish
family in Baghdad, Iraq, David
Sassoon
set
up the Sassoon company in Bombay,
India, in 1833. In 1844, he
set up a
branch
in Hong Kong, and a year later,
he set up his Shanghai branch
on the
Bund
to cash in on the opium trade.
At that time, about one-fifth
of all opium
brought
into China was shipped on the
Sassoon fleet. They brought
China
opium
and British textiles and took
away silk, tea and silver."
[SHANGHAI STAR,
5-10-01]
Today's drug dealing
is probably the world's most
profitable crime; profit margins
can range from 200% for cocaine
to 1,200% for heroin. The Colombian
international drug cartel, "Kali,"
which monopolizes the trade
in Los Angeles and Miami, is
estimated to distribute over
80% of the world's cocaine and
a third of its heroin. Illegal
drug syndicates are estimated
to take in about $25 billion
a year in the United States
alone. In 1998, 59 tons of cocaine
and 770 pounds of heroin were
confiscated by American police
authorities.
Little known -- and little
publicized -- in America, in
recent years the Jewish "Russian
mafia," and Orthodox religious
and Israeli business networks
with deep links to drug cartels,
have been instrumental in maintaining
the United States drug problem.
Many of these criminals are
particularly pious Jews, and
a number of Orthodox Jewish
religious institutions have
been used for the laundering
of literally hundreds of millions
of dollars in drug money in
(particularly) New York City.
(Money laundering here refers
to the task of getting huge
sums of money that were paid
for drugs, originally in small
bills, into a form of assets
that has the appearance of legality.)
In 1994 Israeli journalist Ben
Kapit exposed this story of
Jewish culpability and corruption
in America's growing drug problem;
he wrote in Hebrew, to an Israeli
audience, in the newspaper Ma'ariv.
American Jews and
Israelis dominate the jewelry
and precious stones and metals
trade in Manhattan, mostly located
in the 47th Street area. "75-80%
of the active traders on the
street are Jews," said Kapit,
"A large part of them are very
pious Orthodox Jews, mainly
Hassids. There is also a respectable
representation of Jews from
Iran and Syria, usually also
very pious ... the place is
also the biggest launderer for
drug money in the United States."
[KAPIT, p. 2]
Daily transactions
of huge sums of money -- including
interstate and international
-- is part of the diamond business
(as is backroom secrecy, based
on "personal acquaintance and
trust," [KAPIT, p. 2]; boxes,
large packages, and armored
trucks come and go regularly
under heavy security. All this
provides a convenient front
for the laundering of massive
amounts of drug money, most
of it in $10 and $20 bills.
"One of the most popularly
successful ways to launder money,"
notes Kapit, "is through Jewish religious institutions,
such as yeshivas and synagogues.
Since the majority of the 47th
Street gold and diamond merchants
are religious Jews, the process
is made easier." [KAPIT, p.
4]
"Today," noted Newsweek
in 1977, "the Japanese give
diamond engagement rings nearly
as often as American, and wealthy
Arabs who once eschewed diamonds
for the more colorful stones,
have become insatiable diamond
buyers ... Little wonder, then,
that tampering robberies and
even murders have come to haunt
the business, not only along
West 47th Street in New York
-- where the mostly Jewish dealers
see an 'Israeli mafia' behind
the murder last month of one
of their numbers -- but the
world's other diamond centers
as well." [ATLAS, p. 95]
"The robberies that plague
the diamond districts of New
York and Tel Aviv," notes David
Koskoff, "are almost always perpetrated by people
from within the diamond community."
[KOSKOFF, p. 191] In 1990, the Jerusalem Post,
paraphrasing the Los Angeles
County Sheriff, Sherman Block
(also Jewish), noted that "Los
Angeles' small but potent 'Israeli
mafia’ has spread across America,
graduating in the last two decades
from extorting poor Jews --
often concentration camp survivors
-- to major drug-dealing and
fraud schemes against the rich
... Cocaine is the favored product
of the mafia's drug dealing,
and their clients tend to be
affluent people who demand the
highest quality." [DERFNER,
9-9-90, ONLINE]
U.S. Federal agents
have identified, says Kapit,
what it calls "the Cocaine
Triangle. Its sides are:
Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish
money launderers, and Jewish-Russian
mafiosos ... You need only look
at the list of arrests and indictments
of the past three years in order
to grasp the enormous scope
of Israeli involvement in the
field." [KAPIT, p. 3] There are numerous murky criminal interfaces
between these Israeli drug dealers,
the so-called "Russian" mafia,
and some of the most pious Jewish
Orthodox religious circles. The link between Israeli weapons dealing
and South American underworld
organizations is also deep. In 1988, for example, an Israeli paramilitary
training company called "Spearhead,"
directed by a former senior
army officer, Yair Klein, was
hired to train members of a
drug cartel in Colombia. Klein
was eventually fined all of
$13,000 by Israeli authorities
for "exporting defense know-how
not covered in his permit."
[HIRSCHBERG, p. 13]
In 1990 the Jewish
Week reported that "three
United States officials were
in Israel ... investigating
possible Israeli connections
to the Colombian drug cartel"
and that earlier NBC had reported
that "Israeli reserve officers....
[were providing] military training
to drug-cartel gunmen." [GOLBERG,
A, p. 51]
An associate of Klein, Israeli
Arik Afek, known publicly as
a "flower importer," was found
dead in the trunk of a car at
the Miami airport in 1990. The
Washington Post noted
that
"Afek's name
first surfaced last summer when
NBC News broadcast film
allegedly
showing foreign mercenaries
training Medellin cartel gunmen
in
ambush
assassinations and other paramilitary
activities." [ISIKOFF, p.
A14]
Still, in May 2000,
Colombian authorities busted
four Israelis and one Colombian
citizen in an "arms trafficking
ring" that sought to funnel
weapons into the country. [XINHUA
GENERAL NEWS SERVICE, 5-27-2000]
Itzik Richter, Ofer Zismanovich,
David Birnbaum and Yaron Cohen
with known links to the Cali
drug cartel, were arrested,
also on charges of a scheme
to counterfeit dollars. A few
weeks earlier another Israeli,
Amos Shimoni, had been arrested
in Panama on similar charges.
[KRAU, 5-29-2000]
"Among
the recent items of news that
failed to make more than passing
mention," noted R. T. Naylor
in 1989, "... is the scandal
over the chummy relations senior
members of Israel's military
maintain with both the Colombian
cocaine barons and their Panamanian
affiliate, General Manual Noreiga."
[TAYLOR, p. 136] Noreiga's alleged "right hand man" was
a Mossad agent, Mikhail Harari.
In 1988 the Jewish Week
reported that "[U.S.] Senate
investigations have turned up
information linking Panama's
recently indicted military strongman,
General Manuel Antonio Noreiga,
to the Mossad, Israel's external
intelligence agency." [WAGMAN,
p. 5] Jose I. Blandon, a former
influential Noreiga adviser
and Panamanian counsel in New
York, told Congress that Michael
Harrari, "described as a former
Israeli army general who later
worked for Mossad," lived in
close contact with Noreiga for
5-7 years and trained "Noreiga's
private guard -- a unit separate
from the Panamanian army. Guard
officers report to Noreiga through
Harari." [WAGMAN, p. 5] Brandon
also noted that "Harrari often
acts as a middleman in weapons
purchases that Noreiga makes
in Europe," and that "when Noreiga
travels in Europe, Harari arranges
for his protection by Israeli
military intelligence and Mossad
personnel." "Investigators believe
Panama," reported the Jewish
Week, "a kind of Switzerland
of the Caribbean, has become
a center of Israeli financial
dealings and for so-called front
companies -- corporate shells
operating for secret owners,
in this case the Israeli government.
Investigators believe another
of Harari's functions is to
oversee bank accounts and shell
companies ... Panama [functions]
... as a haven for shadowy financial
transactions." [WAGMAN, p. 5]
Secret reports were also in
Noreiga's possession of various
United States politicians, from
Senators Edward Kennedy to Jesse
Helms; "Some [Senate investigators]
speculate," said the Jewish
Week, "the files may have
come to Noreiga through Harari."
[WAGMAN, p. 5]
In 1985, Israeli Shmuel
Targan, who used a fake shoe
store in New York City as the
front for his drug operation,
was arrested for cocaine and
heroin smuggling. Rudolph Giuliani,
then the U.S. District Attorney
for Southern New York, noted
that Taragan's store "was one
of a 100 Israeli-operated legitimate
businesses in the city that
disguised illegal operations."
[FISHER, A.] In 1986 five Israelis
were arrested in New York for
a million-dollar-a-week heroin
and cocaine operation. In 1988
five more Israelis were busted
in Boston for drug running by
the FBI. Also in 1988, in Los
Angeles, Israelis Abraham Zarchia
and Yitzhak Edvi received ten
year prison sentences for drug
trafficking -- $22 million over
a five month period. [HUNTER,
LINK, p. 4, 6, 7]
In 1985, Max Mermelstein,
described by his lawyer as "just
a nice Jewish guy who got into
the wrong industry," [MURPHY,
pt. 1, p. 3] became a government
witness against a number of
former accomplices in Colombia's
international Medellin drug
cartel. Over seven years, Mermelstein
was himself responsible for
the smuggling of 55 tons of
cocaine, worth $360 million,
into the United States. (Curiously,
the town of Medellin was actually
founded by Spanish Jews in 1616).
Elsewhere, a pioneer
in the laundering of Colombian
drug money (particularly that
from marijuana and cocaine)
was Isaac Kattan-Kassin, son
of a Sephardic Jewish family
that had fled Hitler's Germany
in the 1930s. In the late 1970s,
over $100 million a year of
the tainted bills passed through
his family's currency exchange
business in Cali, Colombia,
although Kattan established
business offices in New York
and Miami, where he spent most
of his time. In 1977, he "went
to work full time for several
cocaine organizations" [POWIS,
p. 34] and he eventually became
known as "the most famous of
the money launderers of this
period." [POWIS, p. 32] Another
prominent drug money launderer
in this era was Beno Ghitis,
who also headed a Colombian
currency exchange business founded
by his father, Alter. Victor
Eisenstein was also a crucial
partner in the drug money ring,
and Abel Holtz, president of
Capital Bank in Miami, was a
participant as the American
depository. [POWIS, p. 74]
In 1993 an FBI sting
operation arrested an Israeli
in New York City, Zion Ya'akov
Eveheim, who had both Israeli
and Colombian citizenship. In
less than a year he and his
associates laundered $22.5 million
in drug money through a fake
corporation called Prism. Other
Israelis arrested with him were
Raymond Shoshanna, Daniella
Levi, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayan,
and Alex Ajami. "Many other
suspects," says Kapit, "escaped
to Israel." [KAPIT, p. 3] One
of the interviewers in Hebrew
for the FBI was a Jewish New
Jersey resident, Neil Elefant.
He was disturbed to discover
an Israeli friend in trouble.
He went to his rabbi, Elazar
Teitz, who recommended "that
it was his religious duty to
warn [Elefant's Jewish friend]."
Elefant did so, and upon his
own exposure for aiding a drug
criminal to escape, Elefant
claimed he did it because of
"the zealousness, almost approaching
anti-Semitism, which he found
among the FBI agents trying
to involve Israel in drug affairs."
[KAPIT, p. 3] Among those Israelis
who escaped, thanks to Elefant's
warning, were Adi Tal, David
Va'anunu, Yishai Ya'anunu, and
Ya'akov Cohen. "Most of them,"
says Kapit, "came out of the
affair with a lot of money they
took to Israel. The Americans
know that the chances of any
of them being extradited to
the United States are close
to nil." [KAPIT, p. 4]
In another drug laundering
case, in 1990 Aharon Sharir,
"undoubtedly the major Israeli
launderer," in America [KAPIT,
p. 5] was busted; he subsequently
confessed to laundering $200
million. Sharir's testimony
led to 35 other Jewish launderers,
including American Stephan Scorkin,
"the biggest laundering shark
in the history of the United
States." Scorkin was accused
of laundering $300 million.
Sharir's partner, Lihu Ichilov,
fled back to Israel. [KAPIT,
p. 6] "Even with automatic money
counting machines," testified
Sharir, "it was difficult to
count the money. It arrived
in bills of five, ten, and twenty
dollars. The bills, most of
which had been to sniff cocaine,
had a strong odor of coke. A
real stink. My employees could
not stand it. Every 2-3 hours
they had to take a break, go
out for some fresh air, so as
not to get high." [KAPIT, p.
5]
Another Israeli drug
laundering ring, led by Adi
Tal, a former El-Al airline
security guard, was broken up
by American authorities in 1988.
Eleven members were arrested.
"An important member of Tal's
laundering ring," notes Kapit,
"was Rabbi Shalom Levitin, a
Lubavitch Hassid, head of the
Chabad branch in Seattle. It
is assumed that all the considerable
political power of these Hassids
were exerted in favor of that
laundering ring." [KAPIT, p.
4] "I was motivated by my desire
to help my brethren in need,"
explained Rabbi Levitin, "with
funds being transferred to Israel."
"People in the community know
that he is only concerned about
helping Jewish people," said
Mark Goldberg, President of
Congregation Shareiev Telfilah-Lubavitch."
[Degginger, C., p. 12] Levitin got off easy with a $10,000
fine and a 30-day sentence in
a half-way house.
In 1984 the
oldest yeshiva [Jewish Orthodox
religious studies center] in
New York City, Tifereth Yerushalayim,
was also busted for drug laundering.
"The yeshiva's representative,"
says Kapit, "was a very pious
Hassid, Mendel Goldenberger,
who daily received cash ...
and deposited the money in the
yeshiva's account ... Nine persons
were convicted in the affair,
including Rabbi Israel Eidelman,
Vice President of the yeshiva,
and some of its dignitaries."
[KAPIT, p. 4] "Laundering money
is extremely beneficial to the
yeshivas and other Jewish institutions,"
Kapit was told, "... The attitude
of the pious Jewish community
... is drugs are sold anyway.
As long as it does not harm
our community and only does
good for it, it doesn't matter
if we benefit from drug trade."
[KAPIT, p. 5]
In 1990 another rabbi,
Yosef Crozer, was arrested by
FBI agents; he had in his possession
prayer books, five passports,
and $280,000 in cash in the
trunk of his car." [KAPIT, p.
1] In another 1990 case, a group
of Hassids in the Orthodox community
of Williamsburg, New York, was
investigated for drug laundering
operations. The accused included
Naftali, Miklosh, Yitzhak, and
Ya'akov Shlesinger, and Milton
Jacoby. Money was laundered
"on checks drawn from the account
of Camp Yereim (Camp of the
Pious) -- a Hassidic summer
camp in the Catskills." [KAPIT,
p. 5] The next year, in an unrelated
case, a 38 year old Israeli
-- Uri Mizraci -- was murdered
in Manhattan; investigators
suspected he was smuggling hashish
and heroin into the United States. He was also suspected of being a "hired
executioner" from an Israeli
organized crime group. [JAMES,
p. B4] Earlier, in 1986, Daniel Whitman and
"cocaine dealer Robert Cohen
were arrested for conspiring
to murder Raymond Cohen, no
relation to Robert, allegedly
to keep him from testifying
in [a National Football League]
ticket scalping investigation."
[MOLDEA, 1989, p. 396]
In 2001, Israel drug dealer
Alen Amor, living in the U.S.
on a tourist visa, was arrested
in Los Angeles. Police found
30 pounds of marijuana at his
home, as well as cocaine and
heroin. [LOS ANGELES TIMES,
10-17-01, p. B5
And, as Alan Block notes,
"In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, [Jewish] Russian-émigré
Vladimir
Beigelman, of Brooklyn,
N.Y., was known to be involved
in cocaine
trafficking with the Cali cartel. On
December 2, 1993, Beigelman
was
fatally shot in the
face while exiting a van in
Queens, N.Y. Witnesses
described the assailants
as two Hispanics. Evidence indicates
Beigelman was murdered
in a dispute over a large quantity
of
missing cocaine."
[BLOCK, A., 1996, p. 193]
Further indictments against
"Russian" immigrant criminals
cited by Block include David
Podlog and Alexander Moysif,
"on charges of distributing
heroin and cocaine," "four Russian
émigrés ... indicted for the
manufacture of crack cocaine
vials at factories in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania," and various
heroin smuggling charges against
Boris Nayfield, Shalva Ukleba,
Alexander Mikhailov, Simon Elishakov,
and Valery Krutiyl. [BLOCK,
A., 1996, p. 193-194]
In 1994 still
another Hasidic rabbi, an especially
prominent one, Abraham Low,
of the Mogen Abraham synagogue
in Los Angeles, was arrested
with a Jewish businessman, Alan
Weston, and an African-American
woman, Charlesetta Brown, on
charges of a drug laundering
project worth about $2 million.
It involved elements of the
usual scenario: Hasidic diamond
dealers in New York City and
the bank accounts for Orthodox
Jewish religious charities.
[DE LAMA, 1, 10] "The cash would be delivered to Hasidic
diamond dealers known to the
rabbi." [MALNIC, A16] Brown
also offered to sell an undercover
FBI agent "assault rifles, pistols,
bullet proof vests, and knives
-- "any quantity ... on a regular
basis." [MALNIC, A16] When the
FBI received the tip about Rabbi
Low's drug laundering activities,
he was already under investigation
in a $189 million "check kiting"
scheme and a "promissory note
scheme in which the Bank of
America might lose $70 million."
[WEINSTEIN, B9]
A request was made
by Low's lawyers to the court
to dismiss the charges because
of alleged "outrageous government
misconduct" by an FBI investigator
and "anti-Semitism." Efforts
to have the case dismissed against
Low included the accusation
that an FBI agent cursed at
one of the rabbi's associates
and that an FBI informer had
spoken an "anti-Semitic slur"
to Low and "declared that the
Torah was a piece of toilet
paper." [WEINSTEIN, B9] The
prosecutor in the case argued
that the claim that Rabbi Low
"had been singled out because
he is Jewish is a smokescreen
to divert attention from his
lawbreaking." [WEINSTEIN, B11]
The rabbi was
subsequently convicted of a
felony: good for five years
in prison. "Low," noted Israeli
journalist Kapit, "is married
to the niece of the Satmar [Hasidic
sect] Rabbi, Moshe Teitelbaum,
who wields enormous political
power in New York state." [KAPIT,
p. 5]
(Three years earlier,
another pious Hasidic Teitelbaum
-- Hanoch -- was sentenced in
Rockland County, New York, to
20-months to five years in prison
for stealing $1 million in mortgages,
loans, and welfare payments).
[NYT, 12-6-91]
From prison, Low later
filed a law suit, demanding
special privileges, including
housing with other Jews. Rabbi
Low "also wanted the prison
to buy him a $30,000 Torah,
about 200 religious texts, and
to build a separate prayer room
with a special sink." [HOUSTON]
Incredibly, the government
agreed to a settlement in which
it paid $270,000 in Low attorney
fees, as well as to let him
leave prison for ten days on
Passover, and to spend further
time in a half-way house for
the "High Holy Days." [HOUSTON]
No wonder that in 1997
the London Observer ran
an article about American prison
consultants who offer "advice
to nervous white-collar criminals
on how to survive a spell in
the slammer." Among the advice
for better prison treatment
is "pretend to be Jewish." [HELMORE,
p. 17]
Another example of this
kind of special treatment was
the newsworthy 1996 case of
Sholam Weiss, an ultra-Orthodox
Jew, who was serving a seven-month
prison term. He "conned his
jailers into giving him permission
to spend Passover with his family,
then took off for a high-rolling
trip to an Atlantic City casino."
[SMITH, G., 5-22-96, p. 24]
In 1998 Neil Lederman (sentenced
to prison for 11 months for
writing a bad $60,000 check)
made Washington DC-area news
for the results of his request
for kosher food from his jailers.
To save the hassle of providing
it, Lederman was released from
jail and allowed "detention"
in his home. Earlier, jail officials had even
"allowed him to go to work during
the day. At night, he returned
to the jail." [JACKMAN, T.,
10-8-98, p. B12]
In 1994, New York
state began offering Jews "hot
kosher meals" at a cost 30%
higher than all other inmate
meals. In 1997 the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer also
noted that "Oregon authorities
are expecting rampant conversion
to Judaism in the state prison
system, thanks to a judge's
ruling that a convicted murderer
[Daniel Lee Holterman] must
be served kosher meals." These
meals would cost the prison
$4-6 apiece, whereas regular
inmate meals cost $1. In Colorado,
in 2000 Jewish prisoners Charles
Beerheide, Sheldon Pearlman,
and Allen Isaac Fistell won
their lawsuit "for kosher meals
to Jewish prisoners at no charge."
[ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 3-12-94,
p. A19; SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER,
10-1-97, p. C2; ASSOCIATED PRESS,
1-29-2000]
In
2001, a convicted murderer and
convert to Orthodox Judaism,
Hbrandon Lee Flagner, won the
right to sue the state of Ohio.
His grievance was that the prison
had forced him to conform to
its rules and cut his beard
and sidelocks. "Ohio leaders
argued that the case could provoke
thousands of lawsuits ... Attorneys
for [20] states said if exemptions
are allowed 'the ability of
prison officials to maintain
security will inevitably falter,
thereby placing the safety and
welfare of prison staff, inmates,
and the general public at risk.'"
[HOLLAND, G., 12-10-01]
In June 2000, in Las
Vegas, after numerous complaints
from a car-packed neighborhood,
city officials made nine trips
over a three-month period to
a private residence used by
Orthodox Jews for Saturday religious
services. Orthodox rabbi Moshe
Omer (an Israeli with an "English
name" of Michael Essence) was
handcuffed and arrested after
refusing to sign a zoning violation
citation. The rabbi explained
that, under Jewish Orthodox
law, he couldn't work on Saturday
-- and this included signing
a piece of paper. Nor could
he ride in a car, but he was
driven by an officer to jail
anyway. The Jewish mayor of
Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, later
offered a formal apology for
the incident. The rabbi in turn
declared that "the way he was
treated brought images of Nazis
and the Holocaust to mind."
[ASSOCIATED PRESS, 6-22-2000]
Charged with the lead
role in an alleged scheme that
skimmed $1 million from a synagogue
bingo series, Stanley Aronson
described the view of his rabbi
being led by police back to
the (Akron, Ohio-area) synagogue
"reminiscent of Europe in 1938."
Ten people were indicted on
a total of 21 counts, but a
bungled investigation left "six
defendants plead[ing] to a string
of minor misdemeanors." Aronson
and his wife then sued the city
of Akron for $30 million. [EWINGER,
J., 2-20-94, p. 1B; EWINGER,
J., 2-26-94, p. 4B]
In
2002, Robert Noel made the news
when he complained that San
Francisco police "chose a time
when we were out of town to
come over and kick down the
doors of a Jewish home. My relatives
went through this in Germany."
[ESKENAZI, J., 1-16-02] Noel
and his fellow-lawyer wife Marjorie
Knoller, also Jewish, were charged
with a crime when their dog
mauled to death a neighbor.
As the case dragged on, "a judge
opened the door to testimony
on allegations they were involved
in everything from animal sex
to racist prison gangs." [QUINN,
A.] "Several [Holocaust] survivor
advocates questioned Noel's
rationale for raising accusations
of anti-Semitism considering
he and his wife recently adopted
a 38-year-old inmate at Pelican
State Prison, who prison officials
believe is one of the leaders
of a white-supremacist prison
gang called the Aryan Brotherhood."
[ESKENAZI, J., 1-16-02]
It is also not bad to be
a Jewish, particularly a "pious"
one, if one is a criminal seeking
to avoid getting caught. In
January 2000, the Village
Voice noted the difficulties
local police faced in penetrating
an ultra-Orthodox community
to bring a murderer to justice.
Jacob Blum, son of a local rabbi,
was being sought for bludgeoning
to death his grandmother's 61-year
old part-time (non-Jewish immigrant
Polish) cleaning lady. As a
doctor noted, "The victim was
missing a large part of her
brain." "[Police] precinct sources,"
reported the Voice, "say
it is rare for cases [against
ultra-Orthodox hasids] to end in arrests. One cop bitterly
recalled an incident in which
a young hasidic driver who had accidentally
run over an elderly black woman
was not even cited for leaving
the scene of an accident. 'He
