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Sept. 30, 2005
Holy and wholly irreverent
Biographies tell of influential, but very different, New York
Jews.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Haskel Besser never intended to become a practising rabbi. Despite
receiving his ordination in Tel-Aviv and a long personal affiliation
between his family and revered Chassidic leaders, Besser was for
a long time content to work in the business world.
It was his fellow congregants at the shtibel (a small synagogue)
on New York's Upper West Side who anointed Besser as their leader
and, in The Rabbi of 84th Street: The Extraordinary Life of Haskel
Besser (Harper Perennial, 2005), journalist Warren Kozak explains
why.
Born and raised in Katowice, Poland, Besser had a happy childhood
in a wealthy family and was well known for his intelligence from
an early age. His fortunes changed at the outbreak of the Second
World War. The family fled to Tel-Aviv in what was then British
Palestine, waiting to hear news of those who were left behind and
breathing sighs of relief that the Germans failed to reach their
new home. Besser married and became a successful businessman in
Tel-Aviv - but never lost his ties to Chassidism. He eventually
moved his own young family to New York, believing that, in the aftermath
of the Holocaust, America was as important to the revival of the
global Jewish community as Israel.
It was not long before his reputation as a good listener spread
and people from around the neighborhood came to share their woes
and seek his advice. In his more than 80 years, Besser has befriended
and left an impression on Jews and non-Jews alike, among them numerous
world leaders. Along with philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, Besser
has overseen the return of Jewish learning and community to the
young people of Poland and other former Eastern bloc countries.
The Rabbi of 84th Street provides an intriguing look into
the world of Chassidic tradition and of what life was like in British
Palestine in the postwar years.
Besser is described by the leader of New York's Interfaith Centre
as one of "the modern giants of faith" – alongside
such luminaries as Gandhi, Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama.
That analogy ties in well to this portrayal of a thoughtful, unassuming
man who truly embodies the spirit of tikkun olam.
An inspirational thug
Arnold Rothstein was not a man who would ever be compared
to the Dalai Lama. Known by such names as "Mr. Big," "The
Fixer," and "The Big Bankroll," Rothstein was right
in the middle of the New York gambling world in the early years
of the last century. Rothstein was a macher, a big man, and
not in a gentle giant sort of way.
Rothstein's father, Abraham, was a religious man; the son of a shtetl-dweller
who fled the pogroms in the 1800s. Arnold was a thug, and a rich
one. He made his money mostly illegally and held court at the best
restaurants in town. He was rumored to be the inspiration for Meyer
Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby and Nathan Detroit in Guys
and Dolls and the mastermind behind the fixing of the 1919 World
Series. Rich material then, for Nick Tosches – an award-winning
novelist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine.
In King of the Jews (Ecco, 2005), Tosches frames his sprawling
biography with references to Shakespeare, the Bible and the history
of the entire Jewish people. He reproduces a detailed coroner's
report on Rothstein's murder, newspaper interviews and the contesting
of Rothstein's will amid poetically fictionalized accounts of Rothstein's
personal encounters. He writes in a hardbitten style, with opening
lines like, "Big Tim Sullivan was a hell of a man."
The book chronicles Rothstein's early years in New York, the making
of his fortune, his political connections, his attendance at various
race tracks and his failed marriage to a Broadway actress. There
is plenty of material about drinking and sex, but also a sense of
the way the younger Rothstein admired his father and his dapper
fashion sense.
King of the Jews has a peripatetic style, but will certainly
be of interest – particularly to those who lived through the
Jazz Age and the Depression years – as both thriller and historical
document.
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