Jewish Gangsters of Modern Literature »

In this vividly written study, Rachel Rubin posits the Jewish literary gangster -- a figure whose violence, transgressiveness, and ongoing internal conflict render him an important symbol of modernity -- as a locus for exploring questions of artistic power in the interwar years. Focusing specifically on the Russian writer Isaac Babel and Americans Mike Gold, Samuel Ornitz, and Daniel Fuchs, but also taking in cartoons, movies, and modernist paintings, Rubin casts the Jewish gangster as a favorite figure used by left-wing Jewish writers to examine their own place in world history.

Times Literary Supplement - Hyam Maccoby

Writers who employed th image of the Jewish gangster did so in different ways. But Rachel Rubin has extracted from them an interesting chapter in the history of Jewish adaptation to modernity.