American Jews and Law-Enforcement

This section of the non-fiction on American Jews and crime includes summaries of the following books and articles:

Kitaeff, Jack, Jews in Blue: The Jewish American Experience in Law Enforcement [hc, Cambria Press, 2006])

Dzikansky, Mordecai & Robert Slater, Terrorist Cop: The NYPD Jewish Cop Who Traveled the World to Stop Terrorists [hc, Barricade Books, 2010])

Friedman, Ralph, with Patrick Picciarelli, Street Warrior: The True Story of the NYPD's Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 2017]

Kestenbaum, Sam, “Inside the Heads, Hearts and Yarmulkes of Jewish Cops.” The Forward, January 18, 2015

Seedman, Albert, (Chief!: Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives [hc, Arthur Fields Books, 1974]

Dickter, Adam. “Safir’s Mixed Legacy,” New York Jewish Week, August 18, 2000

Levitt, Leonard. “Jews, Hasidic Jews and the NYPD,” NYPD Confidential, November 5, 2018.

Tress, Luke. “Jessica Tisch, Jewish public servant, appointed as commissioner of NYPD,” New York Jewish Week, November 20, 2024.

Kornbluh, Jacob, “Who Is Jessica Tisch, the Jewish NYC Police Commissioner Who Will Serve in Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s Administration?” The Forward, November 19, 2025.

Strauss, Joseph, “Jessica Tisch to stay on as Mamdani's NYPD commissioner, reassuring some Jewish leaders,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency/New York Jewish Week, November 19, 2025.

New York Jewish Week Staff, “Who will run Mamdani's Office to Combat Antisemitism? These names are in the mix,” New York Jewish Week, January 28, 2026.

These New York-centered publications (except for Kitaeff, which is national in scope) are followed by references to Jewish police work in other parts of the U.S., Jewish prosecutors and defense attorneys, and Jewish judges. This section concludes with references on a unique case in the relationship of American Jews to crime and law-enforcement – the Jewish Defense League.

4.4.1 Jack Kitaeff, Jews in Blue

Kitaeff, Jack, (Jews in Blue: The Jewish American Experience in Law Enforcement [hc, Cambria Press, 2006]) 978-1934043042 [- examines the history, experiences, and identity of Jewish Americans working in policing and related areas of law enforcement. A central theme is the apparent tension between the popular image of American Jews as lawyers, doctors, academics, merchants, or political activists and the much less familiar history of Jews as police officers and other criminal-justice professionals.

Kitaeff places Jewish participation in policing within the broader story of Jewish integration into American society. In the great immigration era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews were heavily concentrated in cities such as New York, where encounters with the police were often experienced from the civilian side—particularly by immigrants, labor activists, street peddlers, and residents of crowded working-class neighborhoods. Police departments themselves were frequently dominated by other ethnic groups, particularly Irish Americans, and antisemitism could be an obstacle to Jewish recruitment and advancement. Becoming a police officer therefore represented an unusual but significant avenue of Americanization: the Jewish policeman was no longer merely a member of an immigrant minority dealing with state authority but was himself exercising that authority.

The book emphasizes the personal experiences of Jewish law-enforcement officers. Kitaeff is particularly interested in what happened when Jewish identity intersected with the occupational culture of policing. Jewish officers sometimes encountered stereotypes from colleagues and suspects alike. They could find themselves regarded as anomalous—people who did not fit conventional assumptions about either Jews or policemen. At the same time, Jewish officers frequently developed strong identification with police culture and regarded themselves primarily as professional law-enforcement officers rather than representatives of an ethnic or religious community.

An important aspect of the book is therefore antisemitism within law enforcement. Kitaeff records the persistence of antisemitic jokes, stereotypes, exclusionary practices, and assumptions about Jewish physical weakness or unwillingness to perform dangerous work. The experience varied greatly according to department, generation, and location. The story is consequently not simply one of systematic discrimination but of a gradual erosion of barriers as Jewish officers demonstrated their competence and became increasingly integrated into American police institutions.

The book also deals with the relationship between Jewish police officers and the Jewish community itself. Historically, policing was not necessarily regarded as a prestigious Jewish occupation. Families that encouraged children toward higher education and the professions might regard becoming a policeman as an odd career choice. This produced an interesting double marginality: Jewish officers could encounter antisemitism among fellow policemen while simultaneously discovering that other Jews regarded their occupation as culturally unfamiliar or even somewhat alien.

Kitaeff also challenges the stereotype of Jews as essentially cerebral, nonviolent, or physically unsuited to police work. Jewish participation in policing provides another example—alongside Jewish soldiers, boxers, gangsters, and athletes—of the inadequacy of the old stereotype of Jewish physical passivity. Police work required officers to exercise coercive authority and sometimes physical force, putting Jewish policemen in a social role almost exactly opposite to the conventional image of the vulnerable immigrant Jew.

Another significant theme is Jewish ethical and religious identity. For observant or culturally identified Jewish officers, police work could create practical problems involving the Sabbath, holidays, dietary laws, family life, and participation in Jewish communal institutions. More broadly, officers sometimes interpreted their work through Jewish concepts of justice, protection of life, and responsibility toward the community. Yet Kitaeff does not suggest that there is a single identifiable "Jewish" approach to policing. The experiences he records demonstrate considerable diversity in religious observance, political outlook, and the importance individual officers attach to Jewish identity. – ChatGPT]

While the book anchors its historical beginnings in New York, its modern geographic and institutional scope spans well beyond NYC, including substantial coverage to Jewish American men and women serving in municipal law enforcement on the West Coast. It also features firsthand interviews and research on Jewish agents working nationwide within the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as well as individuals serving across the country within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). [Google/AI]

4.4.2 Mordecai Dzikansky, Terrorist Cop

Dzikansky, Mordecai & Robert Slater, (Terrorist Cop: The NYPD Jewish Cop Who Traveled the World to Stop Terrorists [hc, Barricade Books, 2010]) 978-1569804452 [pb, 2015] 978-1569801604 ] (Disclosure: I had the honour and pleasure of knowing Mordy as a casual friend and occasional jogging partner during his final years in Ra’anana, Israel. He was a “mentsch” of rare integrity and modesty, a big man with a big heart. Like all who knew him, I was shocked and pained when that heart gave out at the age of 60 in 2022. “Yehi zichro Baruch” – may his memory be for a blessing. – SS]

[This is both a police memoir and a counterterrorism memoir, tracing Mordecai (“Morty”) Dzikansky’s unusual career from an Orthodox Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn to service as an NYPD detective and, after September 11, 2001, as the department's representative in Israel. He was the son of Rabbi Jekuthiel Dzikansky and grew up Modern Orthodox, attending yeshiva and wearing a kippah. When he entered the NYPD, observant Jews were exceedingly rare in the department—the later paperback describes him as one of only two Orthodox Jewish NYPD officers at the time. He recounts the practical and cultural difficulties of combining Orthodox observance with police work. Interestingly, he argues that his yeshiva education actually helped prepare him for detective work: Talmudic-style habits of questioning, examining contradictions and looking at problems from different angles proved useful professionally.

The first part of the book therefore gives a relatively rare insider's account of an identifiably Orthodox Jew functioning within the NYPD. Dzikansky began as a uniformed officer patrolling Brooklyn and eventually became a first-grade detective. His Jewish background sometimes became a professional asset. One of his memorable early investigations involved going undercover to investigate the theft and illicit trafficking of Torah scrolls.

He also became involved in cases at the intersection of policing and New York Jewish life, and was directly involved with two particularly important cases: the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane and the 1994 killing of Ari Halberstam, the Hasidic student murdered in the Brooklyn Bridge shooting. These episodes helped establish Dzikansky as an officer who could operate effectively where ordinary criminal investigation, Jewish communal knowledge and politically motivated violence overlapped.

The book changes character dramatically after 9/11. Under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, the NYPD developed its own international counterterrorism and intelligence capabilities rather than relying entirely upon federal agencies. Dzikansky's combination of police experience, Jewish background, Hebrew/Israeli familiarity and investigative skills made him particularly suited to the department's new overseas initiative. He was posted to Israel as an NYPD liaison, working with Israeli police and security personnel and reporting lessons from terrorist incidents back to New York.

Much of Terrorist Cop consequently becomes an eyewitness account of the Second Intifada and the suicide-bombing campaign in Israel. Dzikansky describes arriving at bombing scenes, observing Israeli emergency and investigative procedures, studying the construction and effects of explosive devices, and examining how terrorists selected targets and penetrated security. The descriptions can be graphic: buses, restaurants and other civilian sites become crime scenes from which police must reconstruct how an attack was planned and executed.

The point of these investigations was not simply to solve crimes in Israel. Dzikansky was continually asking: What can New York learn from this? Israeli experience offered lessons about protecting mass transit, restaurants, public gatherings and other “soft targets”; detecting suspicious behavior; coordinating police, intelligence and emergency services; and educating ordinary citizens to report potential threats. His work therefore illustrates an important development in post-9/11 American policing—the globalization of municipal counterterrorism, with an NYPD detective studying attacks overseas because similar methods might eventually be employed in New York.

His responsibilities also took him beyond Israel. Accounts of the book emphasize his exposure to terrorist incidents and counterterrorism practices in places including Egypt, Turkey, Spain and Russia. Thus the title's “traveled the world” is not simply promotional: Dzikansky became, in effect, an NYPD specialist in learning from terrorist attacks wherever they occurred and translating those lessons into preventive policing at home.

Repeated exposure to the immediate aftermath of suicide bombings took a psychological toll. The memoir describes Dzikansky's eventual struggle with post-traumatic stress, so that the book becomes partly an account of the cost borne by police officers who repeatedly confront scenes of mass violence. – ChatGPT]

4.4.3 Ralph Friedman, Street Warrior

Friedman, Ralph, with Patrick Picciarelli, (Street Warrior: The True Story of the NYPD's Most Decorated Detective and the Era That Created Him [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 2017] 978-1250106902 [pb, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2018] 978-1250190437 [See related film] [ - one of the most highly-decorated detectives in NYPD history. He served from 1970 to 1984, much of that time in the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx, the precinct famously nicknamed “Fort Apache.” The book is both a personal memoir and a portrait of New York policing during the fiscal crisis, urban deterioration, drug epidemics, and extremely high violent-crime rates of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Friedman came to police work with the temperament of a street fighter rather than that of a cautious bureaucrat. The memoir begins even before his police career, portraying a young man attracted to cars, speed, physical risk, and confrontation. Once he joins the NYPD, these qualities translate into an unusually proactive style of policing. Rather than waiting for calls, Friedman actively searches for criminals and suspicious situations and repeatedly makes arrests while off duty. The publisher credits him with roughly 2,000 arrests, 100 off-duty arrests, 6,000 assists, involvement in 15 shootings, shooting eight suspects, and killing four.

The heart of the book is Friedman's account of policing the South Bronx during its most troubled period. The neighborhood is depicted as devastated by arson, abandoned buildings, poverty, heroin and later other drugs, gangs, robberies, and violent crime. Friedman and his partners confront armed robbers, drug dealers, murder suspects and street criminals, often in situations that suddenly become violent. The narrative therefore reads at times more like hard-boiled crime fiction than a conventional police memoir: stakeouts, foot pursuits, undercover operations, arrests and gun battles follow one another rapidly.

But Street Warrior is not simply a collection of heroic-cop anecdotes. Friedman also describes the psychological and ethical ambiguities of street policing. He discusses racial profiling, police relations with minority residents, the decision to use deadly force, and confrontations with some of the same citizens police were supposed to protect. The perspective remains very much Friedman's own—that of a policeman operating in dangerous circumstances rather than a detached historian—but this makes the book useful as a primary-source account of how an exceptionally active officer understood policing during that era.

An important underlying theme is the difference between the policing culture of Friedman's era and that of later decades. Officers enjoyed considerable individual discretion, communications and surveillance technology were primitive by today's standards, and street knowledge, informants, observation and physical courage mattered enormously. Friedman presents the policeman as an almost autonomous hunter of criminals. At the same time, the book inadvertently illustrates why later policing became more regulated: the latitude that enabled highly motivated officers like Friedman to operate so aggressively could also produce questionable searches, racial assumptions and dangerous confrontations.

His career was remarkably compressed. Friedman served only fourteen years, retiring in 1984 because of injuries sustained in the line of duty. Yet during that period he accumulated more awards and honors than any other detective in NYPD history, according to his publisher.

Friedman provides a relatively unusual example of a Jewish New York policeman whose memoir is principally about being a cop rather than about being Jewish. He represents the extent to which, by the postwar period, a Jewish officer could participate fully in the famously rough culture of New York street policing rather than appearing primarily as a Jewish outsider confronting an overwhelmingly Irish- or Italian-American institution. The book is therefore potentially valuable alongside explicitly Jewish-policing works: it shows Jewish integration into the rank-and-file culture of the NYPD rather than concentrating on antisemitism or ethnic identity. After retirement, Friedman remained interested in law enforcement and police issues, eventually becoming a frequent speaker, lecturer and interview subject.

His own biographical site describes him as still involved with law enforcement through “talks, lectures and interviews.” His career also became the basis for the 2017 Discovery television series Street Justice: The Bronx, in which Friedman recounts cases from his years in the 41st Precinct, supplemented by dramatized reconstructions. [See description in the companion Filmography] - ChatGPT

4.4.4 Sam Kestenbaum, “Inside the Heads, Hearts and Yarmulkes of Jewish Cops”

Kestenbaum, Sam, “Inside the Heads, Hearts and Yarmulkes of Jewish Cops.” The Forward, January 18, 2015 [ - asks how Jewish identity, historical memory, and religious values interact with the culture and demands of police work. The article appeared amid the intense national debate over policing following the deaths of Eric Garner and other Black Americans, and it contrasts Jewish participation in protests against police brutality with the less-discussed fact that thousands of Jews themselves serve in law enforcement.

A central figure is Rabbi Gary Moskowitz, a former NYPD officer who spent nearly a decade on the force, including work as an undercover narcotics officer. An observant Jew who wore a yarmulke, Moskowitz recalls public surprise at encountering a visibly Jewish policeman. For him, police work challenged the stereotype of Jewish men as intellectuals, professionals, or businessmen rather than physically assertive authority figures. He connects his policing to tikkun olam, although he is also sharply critical of inadequate police training and aspects of NYPD treatment of Black citizens.

Kestenbaum also interviews Rabbi Alvin Kass, longtime chief chaplain of the NYPD. Kass estimated that there were roughly 3,000 Jews among the NYPD's approximately 34,000 officers at the time. He emphasizes the historical transformation represented by Jewish policemen: Jews came from European societies where police and other state authorities were frequently instruments of persecution; in America, Jews could themselves become officers charged with protecting citizens and enforcing democratic law.

The article discusses the Shomrim Society, founded in New York in 1924, described as the country's oldest and largest Jewish law-enforcement fraternal organization. It also profiles Jewish officers outside New York, including Jerome Cobert in Northern California and retired Bay Area officer Steve Harris. Their families initially had reservations about police careers—partly because Jewish historical experience created suspicion of uniforms and governmental authority.

Kestenbaum' argues that Jewish officers sometimes interpret policing through specifically Jewish ethical or historical categories. Kass invokes the Jewish conception of the struggle between the yetzer tov and yetzer hara; other officers cite memories of persecution, the Holocaust, civil rights, empathy with outsiders, and Jewish ideas of justice. At the same time, Jewish identity does not produce a uniform political attitude toward policing: some interviewees defend police conduct strongly, while Moskowitz is considerably more critical. – ChatGPT]

4.4.5 Albert Seedman, Chief!

Seedman, Albert, (Chief!: Classic Cases from the Files of the Chief of Detectives [hc, Arthur Fields Books, 1974]) 978-0525630043 [pb, expanded edition, Universe, 2011] 978-1450279727 [-both a police memoir and true-crime casebook, built around twelve major investigations handled by Albert A. Seedman during his thirty-year career with the New York City Police Department. Seedman eventually became Chief of Detectives in 1971—the first, and apparently still the only, Jewish officer to hold that post.

Rather than giving a conventional chronological autobiography, Seedman and journalist Peter Hellman reconstruct a series of cases that illustrate both Seedman's career and the workings of the NYPD Detective Bureau during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s. The book combines investigative narrative with portraits of victims and suspects, courtroom material, police-station anecdotes, and Seedman's descriptions of how apparently insignificant clues could break a case. Contemporary Kirkus Reviews particularly noted this combination of crime reconstruction, detection and accounts of station-house life.

Among the principal cases are: The murder of Kitty Genovese (1964); The Joe Colombo shooting; The Joe Gallo killing; The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion of March 1970 (Weather Underground); Black Liberation Army attacks on police officers; Jewish Defense League cases, including the investigation of attacks associated with militant protests against Soviet treatment of Jews; Other cases include major frauds, sniper attacks and less celebrated investigations demonstrating Seedman's painstaking approach to ordinary detective work.

A recurrent theme is Seedman's belief that successful detection depends less upon cinematic brilliance than upon attention to detail, records, patient questioning and the intelligent coordination of large numbers of detectives. One description of the book summarizes his method as extracting solutions from the mundane information generated by a highly documented modern society.

There is also a substantial institutional dimension. Seedman describes an NYPD coping simultaneously with conventional organized crime, racial conflict, anti-police violence, political radicalism and intense press scrutiny. He was unusually comfortable with reporters and became one of the most recognizable NYPD officials of his era. The cases therefore double as a portrait of New York during the transition from the relatively conventional crime problems of the 1950s to the politically and socially explosive environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Jewish dimension

Seedman was born in the Bronx in 1918 to Jewish immigrant parents and rose through a police institution in which Jewish officers had historically encountered significant obstacles to advancement. His eventual appointment as Chief of Detectives was therefore notable in itself. A library catalog describes him explicitly as the only Jewish officer ever to hold that position.

The book is not primarily a memoir about Jewish identity or antisemitism, however. Seedman's Jewishness is part of his personal and professional background rather than its organizing subject. That actually makes the book useful for your project: it is a first-person account of a Jewish policeman who reached the highest level of the NYPD detective hierarchy rather than a retrospective study specifically devoted to "Jewish cops."

There is an additional Jewish angle in the Jewish Defense League investigations, where Seedman found himself in the unusual position of being a prominent Jewish police commander investigating militant Jewish activists. The JDL's campaign against Soviet targets and others it considered complicit in Soviet antisemitism created precisely the conflict between ethnic/religious solidarity and impartial law enforcement that makes Seedman's career relevant to a study of Jews in American policing.

4.4.6 Adam Dickter, “Safir’s Mixed Legacy”

Dickter, Adam. “Safir’s Mixed Legacy.” New York Jewish Week, August 18, 2000. Adam Dickter’s article appeared as Howard Safir was leaving office after four years as NYPD commissioner (1996–2000). Its central argument is captured by the title: Safir left a genuinely mixed legacy. He could point to dramatic reductions in crime and significant achievements in combating hate crimes, but his tenure had also become associated with controversies over police shootings, brutality, and deteriorating relations between the NYPD and minority communities.

On the positive side, during Safir’s tenure overall crime reportedly declined 38 percent and homicide 44 percent, reaching its lowest level in three decades. Jewish organizations particularly appreciated his attention to bias crimes. The Anti-Defamation League's New York regional director, Howie Katz, praised Safir for upgrading the NYPD Bias Crime Unit into a task force, enlarging its staff, and establishing an advisory board through which community representatives could offer recommendations. Katz nevertheless thought Safir's defensive response to criticism contributed to the barriers between police and communities—hence, in Katz's phrase, a “mixed legacy.”

The principal negative issue was police use of force. Safir and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani were accused of emphasizing aggressive crime reduction at the expense of police-community relations. The article refers particularly to several highly publicized police encounters involving unarmed Black civilians. Jewish critics such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice argued that it was especially disappointing that New York's first Jewish commissioner had presided over a period associated with notorious police-brutality controversies.

Safir and the Jewish community

The most important case affecting Safir's reputation among Jews was the 1999 police killing of Gideon (Gidone/Gary) Busch, a mentally disturbed Orthodox Jewish man in Borough Park. Police maintained that Busch threatened officers with a hammer; civilian witnesses disputed important elements of that account. Safir strongly defended the officers, and Busch's family and some Borough Park leaders believed that he had responded insensitively and too readily accepted the police version. Although a grand jury declined to indict the officers, the incident seriously damaged Safir's standing in parts of Orthodox Brooklyn.

This is significant because Safir's Jewish identity did not automatically translate into solidarity with Jewish complainants against the police. In the Busch controversy, he behaved primarily as the institutional head and defender of the NYPD rather than as a Jewish communal figure.

Safir and Jewish police officers

The article is especially valuable here. It reports that the Shomrim Society, the organization of Jewish NYPD personnel, represented roughly 2,000 Jewish officers and employees at the time. Safir's appointment as the city's first Jewish police commissioner initially produced a considerable boost in Shomrim morale.

Safir did not conceal or minimize his Jewish identity. Shomrim president Gene Stevens recalled that Safir openly expressed pride in being Jewish. More concretely, he was himself a dues-paying Shomrim member—paying the $20 annual membership fee—and regularly attended important Shomrim functions, including breakfasts and its annual oneg Shabbat.

Yet relations were not entirely satisfactory. Former Shomrim president Sgt. Eric Finkelstein complained that Safir took more than eight months to respond to a 1998 letter concerning alleged antisemitic incidents within the NYPD. Safir maintained that he had never received the letter and eventually met Finkelstein after The Jewish Week published articles about the issue. Finkelstein nevertheless regretted that Shomrim had not developed the close relationship with the city's first Jewish commissioner that its members had hoped for.

That contrast makes the article particularly revealing: Safir was personally and publicly comfortable with Jewish identification, but Jewish officers did not necessarily believe that having a Jewish commissioner gave their organization greater institutional influence.

Safir himself regarded his appointment as breaking a barrier. He told Dickter that he was proud to have helped dispel the notion that law enforcement was somehow not a Jewish vocation. He emphasized that Jews had a long history in the NYPD even though none had previously reached the commissioner's office.

He also supplied an interesting personal explanation for his career. His role model had been his uncle, Louis Weiner, whom Safir described as an important early Jewish NYPD detective. Safir recalled that people still asked how a “nice Jewish boy” had become a policeman; his answer was essentially that he was following his uncle's example and regarded police work as an honorable profession.

NYPD Jewish chaplain Rabbi Alvin Kass offered perhaps the strongest favorable judgment, calling Safir one of New York's greatest commissioners and praising his efforts in difficult intergroup disputes. Kass also connected Safir's career—and the retirement of another senior Jewish NYPD official, personnel chief Michael Markman—to the broader history of Jewish participation in the department and argued for stronger efforts to recruit Jews into police service. - ChatGPT

Winsey, Valentine Rossilli, “My Son, the Policeman,” Jewish Life (New York: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America), ca. 1972–73. [Exact issue and pagination not located.] A secondary article based on Winsey’s: Gallob, Ben, “The Jewish Cop: Economics Influenced His Career Decision,” Detroit Jewish News, January 5, 1973. [Gallob reports on Winsey's research into the occupational motivations and experiences of Jewish New York police officers. In 1973 anthropologist Valentine Rossilli Winsey conducted interviews with Jewish members of the NYPD, asking why Jews chose police work. Her research found that economic security had historically been an important attraction, particularly for the Depression generation, but that Jewish recruitment was declining as higher education and other occupations became more accessible and police work retained relatively low status and pay.]

Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Behind the Headlines: Drive on for More Jewish Cops,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, August 30, 1973. [The article concerns the NYPD's 1973 campaign to recruit more Jewish officers, particularly the work of Lewis A. Berns, Barry J. Lichtenstein, and George Drucker, and discusses the historically low Jewish representation in the NYPD. The very existence of such a campaign is useful evidence for the perception, by the early 1970s, that Jewish participation in policing was declining and complements the findings of Winsey’s research. – ChatGPT]

Levitt, Leonard. “Jews, Hasidic Jews and the NYPD.” NYPD Confidential, November 5, 2018. [A revealing journalistic commentary on Jews within the NYPD and the department's complicated relationship with New York's Hasidic communities. Levitt argues that overt institutional antisemitism had largely ceased to be significant at senior levels of the department, citing Jewish advancement, Howard Safir's tenure as police commissioner, and the longstanding role of Jewish chaplain Rabbi Alvin Kass. At the same time, he describes resentment among some rank-and-file officers toward the perceived political influence and preferential treatment of Hasidic communities, using confrontations at Brooklyn's 66th Precinct and contemporary corruption investigations as examples. Particularly useful for distinguishing the experience of Jewish officers within the NYPD from the politically sensitive relationship between the department and Orthodox/Hasidic communal organizations.]

4.4.7 Jessica Tisch (articles)

Tress, Luke. “Jessica Tisch, Jewish public servant, appointed as commissioner of NYPD.” New York Jewish Week, November 20, 2024. [This is probably the best starting source specifically on Tisch as a Jewish police commissioner. It appeared immediately after Mayor Eric Adams announced her appointment. Tress identifies her as coming from a prominent Jewish family and discusses both the family's communal activities and Tisch's own Jewish connections. Tisch was born in 1981 into the extraordinarily prominent Tisch family, whose wealth derives principally from Loews Corporation. Her father is James S. Tisch, longtime president/CEO of Loews; her mother, Merryl H. Tisch, is a major figure in New York education and Jewish philanthropy, formerly chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.

Kornbluh, Jacob, “Who Is Jessica Tisch, the Jewish NYC Police Commissioner Who Will Serve in Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s Administration?” The Forward, November 19, 2025. This is probably the most useful single article for the intersection of Tisch's Jewishness, policing, Israel and Mamdani. It reports that Tisch grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, attended Dalton and then Harvard, and was involved with Chabad while at Harvard. Her Jewish identity therefore isn't simply genealogical or a consequence of belonging to the Tisch family. The article describes her as widely respected within New York's Jewish community, both for her policing record and for her support of Israel. Interestingly, it also notes that five of her deputy commissioners were Jewish at the time. This became politically significant precisely because Mamdani's views on Israel are so different from Tisch's. For some Jewish New Yorkers anxious about a Mamdani administration, keeping Tisch at the head of the NYPD was regarded as a source of reassurance. A particularly nice example occurred on January 28, 2026. Tisch installed a mezuzah on the doorpost of her office at NYPD headquarters, One Police Plaza. Tisch recited the blessing and affixed the mezuzah in a ceremony attended by Jewish members of the NYPD. She subsequently described it publicly as a “small but meaningful symbol of faith and resilience.” She does not merely happen to have Jewish parents; she publicly identifies herself with Jewish religious symbolism while serving as police commissioner.

Strauss, Joseph. “Jessica Tisch to stay on as Mamdani's NYPD commissioner, reassuring some Jewish leaders.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency/New York Jewish Week, November 19, 2025. [The title itself captures the significance. Tisch's retention was interpreted by some Jewish leaders not merely as continuity in policing but as a reassuring appointment for Jewish New Yorkers concerned about Mamdani's politics concerning Israel and antisemitism. The Forward similarly described Tisch as someone many Jews viewed as a protector. This makes Tisch's case quite different from Albert Seedman's. Seedman was a pioneering Jewish NYPD leader at a time when the central Jewish issue within policing was substantially whether a Jew could overcome institutional barriers and reach the NYPD's upper command. Tisch operates in an NYPD where being Jewish no longer presents that sort of exceptional institutional barrier. Instead, her Jewish significance involves antisemitism, Jewish physical security, Israel/Zionism and the relationship between the police and an increasingly polarized New York Jewish community.]

New York Jewish Week Staff. “Who will run Mamdani's Office to Combat Antisemitism? These names are in the mix.” New York Jewish Week, January 28, 2026. [The names of the candidates are less important for our summary than Tisch’s public approach to combating anti-Semitism in New York City. She has repeatedly described antisemitic violence and threats as a significant NYPD concern. This is not surprising institutionally—the commissioner has responsibility for all hate crimes—but her public statements sometimes have an unmistakably personal dimension. One especially revealing incident occurred at Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side in November 2025. After an anti-Israel demonstration outside the synagogue produced inflammatory chants and problems for people entering and leaving, Tisch concluded that the NYPD had failed adequately to protect congregants. She did something unusual for a police commissioner: she went to the synagogue during Shabbat services and personally apologized to the congregation. Her point was that whatever the protesters' First Amendment rights, the police had an obligation to ensure that Jews could enter and leave their synagogue safely. This incident is worth examining in full because Tisch's response was noticeably stronger than the initial response coming from Mamdani's camp.]

Tisch, Israel and Zionism: The evidence indicates that Tisch's connection with Israel is not merely inferred from her Jewish background. She has been publicly identified as a strong supporter of Israel. That produces an extraordinary political configuration: Jewish, pro-Israel NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch serving under Muslim, strongly pro-Palestinian Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yet it would be misleading to portray their relationship simply as Jewish commissioner versus Muslim mayor. Their professional relationship has proved considerably more pragmatic. The most symbolically revealing example came with the 2026 Israel Day Parade. Mamdani declined to participate, consistent with his political position on Israel. Tisch did exactly the opposite: she represented the city and served as an honorary grand marshal, while the NYPD mounted the security operation protecting the parade. That episode almost encapsulates their arrangement: Mamdani did not disguise his political disagreement with the parade's message, but his police commissioner—Jewish and publicly supportive of Israel—participated prominently, while his administration provided police protection. - ChatGPT

4.4.8 Chicago

Miller, Robert Nagler, “My Son, the Jewish Policeman.” Chicago Jewish History, vol. 48, no. 2 (Spring 2024). [Interview subjects: Elliot Cohen, Marc Buslik, and Harold “Sonny” Lukatsky, all associated with the Shomrim Society/Jewish Police Association of Illinois]

Miller, Robert Nagler, “My Son, the Policeman: More Tales from the Shomrim Society.” Chicago Jewish History, vol. 48, no. 3 (Summer 2024), pp. 4–5. [Interview subject: Bruce Rottner, retired/high-ranking Chicago Police Department officer and longtime Shomrim member. Rottner discusses entering the CPD in the early 1970s, when Jewish officers were comparatively unusual; his Jewish upbringing; Jewish concepts of social justice, charity and care for strangers; his decision not to conceal his Jewish identity; antisemitism and racial attitudes within the police environment; and his first Shomrim meeting in 1972. He also identifies Elliot Cohen as one of the few other Jewish law-enforcement officers he knew when beginning his career.]

Miller, Robert Nagler, “My Daughter, the Policewoman: More Tales from the Shomrim Society.” Chicago Jewish History, vol. 48, no. 4 (Fall 2024), pp. 18–19 and continuation. [Interview subject: Joanna Benjamin, sergeant, Chicago Police Department. Benjamin is especially interesting because she represents a younger generation and a Jewish woman in the CPD. She had studied law and urban planning and actually became an attorney before following her longstanding ambition to become a police officer. Her father, Milton Benjamin, had served 43 years with the Chicago Police Department; father and daughter became the first father-daughter pair to serve on the board of the Shomrim Society of Illinois. The interview explicitly asks her how Jewish values informed her law-enforcement career. She identifies Jewish ethical teachings concerning saving life and “Justice, justice you shall pursue” as guiding principles in her police work.]

Miller, Robert Nagler, “My Son, the Policeman: More Tales from the Shomrim Society — David Welbel, Part I.” Chicago Jewish History, vol. 49, no. 1 (Winter 2025), pp. 8ff. [David Welbel was a retired Chicago Police Department sergeant and son of two Holocaust survivors. In his interview he talks explicitly about Holocaust memory and Jewish identity in relation to police service.]

Knight, Meribah,““How a Top Jewish Cop in Chicago Wound Up Managing Its Explosive Police Scandal,” The Forward, May 9, 2016 [Profile of Bruce Rottner, retired Chicago Police deputy chief and former president of the Shomrim Society. Rottner recalled that before entering the department he had essentially never encountered a Jewish policeman; joining Shomrim connected him to a network of fellow Jewish officers.]

Haller, Mark H, “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890–1925,” Law & Society Review (1976) [Not a Jewish-history article as such, but important because Haller explicitly references Jewish detectives dealing with Jewish criminals in his discussion of Chicago policing, i.e. Jewish policemen confronting the immigrant underworld.]

Jewish Police inspectors in other American cities: Various articles and archival references can be found regarding Benjamin Alexander and Morris Wolf of the Boston Police Department; Jacob H. Gomborow of the Philadelphia Police Department; and David Kalish and Ivan Wolkind of the Los Angeles Police Department.

4.4.9 Federal Agents Izzy Epstein and Moe Smith

Federal Agents: Isidor “Izzy” Einstein (1880–1938) and Moe Smith (1887-1960), the Jewish “Hooch Hounds” of Prohibition

Einstein, Isidor, (Prohibition Agent No. 1, [unknown binding, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1932]) B00085LSUI [This firsthand autobiography is the definitive volume on their exploits. Einstein’s account of his time as Prohibition Agent No 1 was dedicated to the 4,932 persons he arrested, "Hoping they bear me no grudge for having done my duty." Einstein and his fellow Prohibition agent, Moe Smith, were the best known Prohibition agents in the country. National Prohibition went into effect in January of 1920, and Einstein applied for a job as a Prohibition agent because it sounded like more fun than sorting mail. He had no training in law enforcement and clearly didn't conform to the stereotype of one at five feet and five inches in height and 225 pounds. He listed from side to side as he walked. Einstein enlisted his friend, Moe Smith, to become a Prohibition agent. Both were members of the Masonic order and that is where they may have met.

Izzy Einstein's success was based on his skill in disguising himself. His ability to speak German, Polish, Hungarian, Bohemian, Yiddish and some Italian and Russian helped him deceive his victims. The human chameleon disguised himself as a German pickle packer, a Polish count, a Hungarian violinist, a Jewish gravedigger, a French maitre d', an Italian fruit vendor, a Russian fisherman and a Chinese launderer. His disguises included a streetcar conductor, an ice deliverer, an opera singer, a truck driver, a judge, a traveling cigar salesman, a street cleaner, a Texas cattleman, a movie extra, a football player, a beauty contest judge, a grocer, a lawyer, a librarian, a rabbi, a college student, a musician, a plumber and a delegate from Kentucky to the Democratic National convention. "In Coney Island, he entered a drinking joint in a wet bathing suit, shivering and gasping for aid. Wearing an attendant's white jacket, he shut another saloon near a hospital." He even disguised himself as an African-American man in Harlem.

Izzy became popular across the country and he was permitted to visit other cities. He posed as a Mexican laborer in El Paso, as an unemployed auto worker in Detroit and as a member of a construction crew in Providence. [Amazon]

Asbury, Herbert, "The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition" [hc, Doubleday, 1950, reprinted by Praeger, 1968] 978-0837100081 [pb, Dover Publications, 2018] 978-0486824680]) Asbury, a premier crime and social historian of the era, dedicates substantial text to documenting the pair's theatrical undercover operations. He memorably described Izzy's round, heavy frame as moving "majestically ahead like the breast of an overfed pouter pigeon."

Okrent, Daniel, "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" [hc, Scribner, 2010]) 978-0743277020 [pb, Scribner, 2011] 978-0743277044 [This definitive, widely acclaimed history of the 18th Amendment positions Izzy and Moe as the most successful and clever federal enforcers of the era, highlighting how their working-class immigrant backgrounds and multi-lingual skills outmaneuvered New York's vast speakeasy network. ]

Thurber, James, “Where Are They Now? Premier Hooch Hounds,” The New Yorker, vol. 11, no. 27, August 17, 1935, pp. 20–25. Writing under the pseudonym Jared L. Manley, legendary humorist James Thurber published a famous retrospective profile tracing their post-Prohibition lives as successful insurance agents for the New York Life Insurance Company.

King, Gilbert, “Prohibition’s Premier Hooch Hounds” Smithsonian Magazine, March 15, 2012. A highly detailed biographical article published online by Smithsonian Magazine that explores their vast inventory of disguises (from gravediggers to trombone players) and analyzes why they were abruptly fired due to bureaucratic jealousy.

History.com Editors, “The Improbable Prohibition Agents Who Outsmarted Speakeasy Owners.” History Channel History Stories, June 14, 2018. A deeply researched article featured on History.com showcasing how these two unlikely, weapon-free agents utilized regional dialects and psychological strategy to dismantle thousands of illegal liquor caches.