The Jews in America Trilogy (171 page)

Of course, one does not stop being Jewish simply by marrying out of the faith, and, by the 1950s, an even more interesting phenomenon had been taking place.

Dorothy Schiff, the former publisher of the
New York Post
, once said, “As to being Jewish, C. P. Snow wrote that once you reach a certain financial level, people don't think of you as anything but rich.” Mrs. Schiff happened to be speaking as a German Jew, whose Frankfurt-born grandfather, the legendary Jacob, had emigrated to America in 1865. But by the 1950s it seemed possible that the Russian Jews, who had emigrated a full generation later, had chosen to follow the German mode. The richest Eastern Europeans had become what their parents and grandparents once deplored about the Germans—“only a little bit Jewish.” Their Jewishness had been relegated to the privacy of their homes, families, and temples and synagogues, if any. Their public facade was that of Americans—successful, rich Americans. If Ben Hecht had conducted his little three-man survey about David Selznick in the 1950s, instead of the 1940s, he might have got quite a different consensus.

In Hollywood, as we have seen, the great movie producers had deep ambivalence about their Jewishness—particularly once they became rich. Toward the end of his life, Louis B. Mayer, perhaps influenced by his friend Cardinal Spellman, seriously considered converting to Roman Catholicism. As the man who
was drawing the highest salary of anyone in the United States, he once commented that he considered himself a good future candidate for sainthood. Harry Cohn, the despotic head of Columbia Pictures, entered life a Russian Jew, and left it a Roman Catholic. Sam Goldwyn's Catholic wife once said that her husband had expressed the wish that they could both become Episcopalians. “After all,” he said, “Goldwyn doesn't sound like a Jewish name”—which of course was why he had chosen it. But by the 1950s it didn't matter. He was rich.

In the world of radio and television, this conscious non-Semitic facade had become if anything more pronounced, as though the newer media had decided to follow the de-Semitization guidelines laid down by the Hollywood of old. Though the boardrooms of the three major networks had become largely populated by descendants of Russian Jews, the out-front faces that the public saw would be the Christian ones of Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Harry Reasoner, and Howard K. Smith. As a result, the general public would not think of television as a Jewish enterprise—simply as a rich one.

Meanwhile, had Rose Pastor Stokes still been around in the 1950s, and had she been a film star or screenwriter, she would have been a sitting duck for something like the House Un-American Activities Committee. She was not rich (she'd muffed that chance). She'd been an avowed Communist (a founder of the American Communist party), even though her crusade had to be accounted a failure. And anti-Russian sentiments were running much stronger in the United States than they had been when Rose was in her fiery prime. She'd probably have gone to jail, and Hedda Hopper probably would have wanted her deported.

In the long run, of course, Miss Hopper's little obituary for Russian Jews who had not quite “made it” would not be taken seriously. But it would represent a kind of WASP blind spot that other American non-Jews would occasionally reveal. The Jews were
foreigners
, citizens of the United States or not.

James Graham Phelps Stokes's second, and Christian, wife would deliver the same sort of innocent obituary about Rose and her “breed” many years later. Showing the same blind spot, revealing the same misunderstanding of what Rose had been
all about, Lettice Sands Stokes would also manage, in her appraisal of Rose, to get some of her facts mixed up.

James G. Phelps Stokes died in 1960, still a member of all his prestigious WASP clubs—the University, the Church, the Pilgrims, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Society of Colonial Wars. By then his widow could only speak vaguely of Rose's role in her late husband's life. “I would have liked to have
met
her,” she recalled,

because she was from all I'd heard a very—
colorful
character, beautiful, with magnificent red hair. But
my
Graham [Mrs. Stokes would seem to make a distinction between her Graham and Rose's Graham] never liked to talk about her much. He was interested in settlement work, and improving living and working conditions on the Lower East Side, and so was she. He admired her, and wanted to help her. But he felt he couldn't just
give
her money and so, to help her, he married her. It was not a passionate love affair, I gather, the way most are. It was more of a meeting of the minds, I suppose. But then she became interested and involved in the Bolshevik uprising, joined them, and went to Russia to fight with them. [Actually, Rose took no active part in the Russian revolution, although she did visit Russia afterward to see how the new system was working.] She came home and tried to obstruct the war effort and the draft—
my
Graham was in the Fourteenth Squadron of the United States National Guard at the time—and she landed in Fort Leavenworth. My Graham had the
devil
of a time trying to get her out. [In fact, Rose was never jailed and was free on bond pending her appeal.] It was very hard on him. Every time either one of them stepped out of doors there were photographers and reporters asking questions. She became a full-fledged Communist. My husband was interested in social problems until the day he died, but never to that extent. He was never a radical. They were separated for a long time, and the divorce was as quiet as he could make it, with no scandal. But it was a tragic story. She was
foreign
, you see, and not accustomed to our ways.

18

“PEOPLE WHO ARE SOLID”

To American Jews in general, in their second and third American generations, there was a new and nagging question of how much commitment to—or rejection of—the new State of Israel was expected of them. There was no doubt that the creation of Israel enhanced American Jews' feelings of self-worth, but there was more to it than that. Along with the guarded new sense of pride in nationhood came a more sobering responsibility, for now Jews everywhere would be asked, or expected, to shoulder the criticism whenever Israel was involved in anything that was less than honorable—Jewish terrorists, for example—and would resent being unjustly asked to share the blame for any of Israel's mistakes. If Israel could be counted upon to be always in the right, that would be one thing. But that was an unrealistic hope for any country, new or old, and if ever Israel seemed demonstrably in the wrong, would that redound to the discredit of American Jews? Alas, it would seem so. This knowledge that Jews would be expected to respond with either patriotism or apology, depending upon how Israel was being perceived at any given moment in the eyes of the rest of the world, would create another subtle reason for
Jewish sensitivity, touchiness. If American Jews had already learned to live in two communities, Israel added a third kind of emotional citizenship. It was a large order.

Many prominent American Jews made it a point to take at least one token trip to Israel in demonstration of support for the new country. David Sarnoff's was in the summer of 1952, when the Weizmann Institute of Science presented him with its first honorary fellowship. In 1957, Sam Bronfman donated the Biblical and Archeological Museum to Israel, but did not actually visit the country until five years later, when he presided over the dedication of a new wing for the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem, for which he had given an even million dollars. But his principal benefactions remained on the North American continent, such as the Saidye Bronfman Cultural Center in Montreal, and the Bronfman Science Center at Williams College, in Massachusetts.

Others, however, have been more ambivalent. Typical of these is Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial-page editor of the
New York Times
, who has said, “I was born in Palestine—but my parents had the sense to get out quickly, when I was three years old. I have no memory of it, and I've never been back. I feel no emotional attachment to Israel—only a kind of abstract curiosity. I feel the same way about Tokyo—another place I'd like to visit someday.”

But at least one wealthy American Jew longed for a peaceful refuge in Israel, and, ironically, it would be denied him. This was Meyer Lansky. “America—Love It or Leave It” was a slogan bruited about by certain superpatriotic types in the 1960s, in answer to the demonstrations of the New Left. But in Lansky's case, at least as far as the United States government was concerned, the principle seemed to be, “America—Love It or Stay.” He had been accused, both in the press and in the courts, of virtually every heinous crime against society—of drug trafficking, prostitution, running numbers and protection rackets, illegal gambling, art theft, extortion, and, of course, of having ordered the murder of Benny Siegel. He had been called the Chief of Chiefs of the Mafia, the Brains Behind the Mob, and Public Enemy Number One. The government had succeeded in getting Lansky's old friend Lucky Luciano deported to Italy. One would suppose the government would have been equally eager to see Lansky shipped to some even farther distant foreign
shore, particularly when he wanted to go at his own expense. But, illogically, the United States authorities seemed determined to keep America's menace firmly in America's midst.

The trouble was that the federal government had been unable to make any of its plethora of charges against Lansky stick. And so, frustrated, it kept trying.

Everywhere he went he was tailed by federal agents. At his homes in New York and Florida, he had grown accustomed to periodic hammerings on his front door, and cries of “Open up in the name of the law,” and to greeting officers with subpoenas and summonses and search warrants. His homes had been ransacked so often that he was resigned to it. When he traveled, he was routinely frisked and searched at airports. When he tried to take a holiday in Acapulco, federal agents followed him there, invaded his hotel suite, searched it, and even cut out the linings of his suitcases looking for contraband. Everywhere, his telephone lines were tapped, his conversations taped, so that for any important telephone call he had to use a pay booth. During one airport search, agents, rummaging through his luggage, came upon a bottle of white pills in his toilet kit. Triumphantly, they shouted, “Drugs!” It turned out to be medication his doctor had prescribed for stomach ulcers, which Lansky had certainly earned in his career. Lansky always tried to be pleasant and cooperative during these intrusions, but his daily life had become something of an ordeal, and that had taken its toll on both his patience and his health.

Also, needless to say, defending the various actions that his government kept pressing against him kept his lawyers busy and kept Lansky paying hefty legal fees. But then his income was considerable, and his books would demonstrate that most of it came from perfectly legal shares of ownership in various Las Vegas casinos and hotels. In addition to the Flamingo, Lansky had interests in nearly every establishment on the celebrated Strip, including the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Stardust, and the Fremont. Yet why, he would complain, would each new legitimate venture of someone like himself invariably be described as an “infiltration”—as though the act of going legitimate were, in his case, somehow subversive.

As for whatever didn't show up on Lansky's books, that information was securely locked in the well-guarded repository that was Meyer Lansky's brain. Without the key to that, all
efforts to find evidence of wrongdoing were futile.

Income tax evasion, of course, had been the undoing of many another criminal. It would be the downfall of Mickey Cohen, who would be sentenced to fifteen years at Alcatraz for that offense—causing Cohen to complain that all his troubles had begun when he
started
paying taxes, which was the first signal to the government that he had any income at all. Lansky, however, had always paid his large taxes scrupulously, on the large income he reported. If there was additional income that he was not reporting, the government simply could not find it, and it was a matter of guesswork. The government suspected large amounts of unreported income, but had not been able to come up with a shred of proof.

Furthermore, despite the Master Criminal reputation that now followed him wherever he went, Meyer Lansky had been convicted of a wrongdoing only once. This had occurred in 1953, when Lansky was arrested for operating an illegal gambling casino at the Arrowhead Inn outside Saratoga Springs. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to ninety days in jail—a minor charge and a minor punishment. After serving sixty days, he was released for good behavior. Later, Lansky would tell his three co-biographers, Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau, that he blamed that arrest on “bad timing.” There had been gambling establishments throughout the Adirondacks—Lansky was a part owner of at least one other besides the Arrowhead Inn—and they were popular tourist attractions. But the Kefauver Committee had just completed its report on organized crime, and, said Lansky, “I'm sure the reason why the cops in Saratoga suddenly took action was that Governor Dewey ordered an investigation because of the Kefauver Report.” That one offense remained—and remains today—the extent of Meyer Lansky's criminal record.

Of course one reason why it was difficult to pin anything on Meyer Lansky may have had something to do with his physical appearance and personality. The trim, diminutive fellow just didn't match anyone's mental picture of a master felon. He didn't sport loud neckties, flashy jewelry, white-on-white shirts, and pin-striped suits with wide lapels. In appearance he looked no more dangerous or threatening than anyone's family dentist. In manner, he was kindly, grandfatherly. (Mickey Cohen was given to frequent bursts of temper and foul language, and
his smashed-nosed face looked as though it had been designed for a post office
WANTED
poster.) Most people who met him immediately liked him, including the FBI men who were assigned to follow him and who occasionally, if somewhat shamefacedly, let him buy them drinks or take them out to dinner at restaurants where Lansky, a generous but not extravagant tipper, was always a favored customer. At Imperial House in Miami Beach, where Lansky and his wife had a large and comfortable but not ostentatious condominium, the Lanskys were considered ideal neighbors. In fact, his presence in the building gave the other tenants an added sense of security. One neighbor, who knew him slightly, recalls him as “a perfectly
darling
little man.” Public Enemy Number One had no noticeable vices. He didn't drink, though he did chain-smoke. He was a faithful husband, a devoted father to his three children. He loved animals, and curbed his dog, a tiny Shih Tzu, whenever he walked it, with the usual FBI men a few respectful paces behind, waiting to catch him in some felonious act.