Strong Armed: Organized Crime and the Jewish Ethnic Economy in New York With Aaron Welt

This talk will explore the role that organized crime played in developing the system of Jewish immigrant capitalism that coincided with the mass migration of Jews to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the Jewish workers movement struggled against the growth of the sweatshop system,

Jewish unions engaged in some of the earliest forms of what became known as "racketeering" in American history. This presentation will demonstrate how Jewish immigrant workers used organized crime in an effort to bring stability and order to the highly chaotic Jewish ethnic economy.