Two Jewish mobsters in 2008
The Jewish Mob is an American Jewish organized crime syndicate that originated in the late 19th century in New York City. In the early 1900s, famous Jewish mob bosses such as Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Waxey Gordon, and Manny Horvitz rose to prominence, taking advantage of bootlegging liquor during Prohibition, running gambling rings, engaging in loansharking, and turning contract killing into a business in the form of Murder, Inc.. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish Mob began to work together with the ethnically-Italian American Mafia, and the two organizations began to merge, with many Jewish criminals acting as associates of Mafia families; Lansky and Siegel were both major figures in the Italian Mafia. During the 21st century, the Jewish Mob engaged in diamond smuggling and trading, and it refused to enter the drug trade.