Summay of Robert Lacey's Meyer Lansky

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The name Meyer is a Jewish name that has no equivalent among the names of other faiths or races. It is thought to have originated in the second century, with a rabbi whose writings won him a special following.

#2 Meyer Lansky was born in Grodno, Russia, in 1902. His family were middle class Jews who ran a business and lived in a stone townhouse. His grandfather was a respected businessman who taught him about the hardships of Jewish history and the promise of Palestine.

#3 The Jewish community of Grodno was met with anti-Semitism in the late 1800s, and they had to defend themselves. They formed a self-defense organization, and practiced shooting in the woods.

#4 The journey to America did not get off to a good start. In the bewilderment of the freight cars, the quarantine stations, and the endless waiting in lines, Yetta Suchowljansky handed over the money for her and her sons’ steamship tickets to a Jew she met who offered to help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822525665

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Insights on Robert Lacey's Meyer Lansky

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The name Meyer is a Jewish name that has no equivalent among the names of other faiths or races. It is thought to have originated in the second century, with a rabbi whose writings won him a special following.

#2

Meyer Lansky was born in Grodno, Russia, in 1902. His family were middle class Jews who ran a business and lived in a stone townhouse. His grandfather was a respected businessman who taught him about the hardships of Jewish history and the promise of Palestine.

#3

The Jewish community of Grodno was met with anti-Semitism in the late 1800s, and they had to defend themselves. They formed a self-defense organization, and practiced shooting in the woods.

#4

The journey to America did not get off to a good start. In the bewilderment of the freight cars, the quarantine stations, and the endless waiting in lines, Yetta Suchowljansky handed over the money for her and her sons’ steamship tickets to a Jew she met who offered to help.

#5

The family was eventually helped to find passage on the S. S. Kursk, a Russian-American Line vessel, from Latvian port of Libau. They reached Ellis Island on April 8, 1911, and were recorded as being thirty years old. Meyer was not recorded as being ten years old, so two years were knocked off his age.

#6

Lansky was a good student, and he thrived on the challenge of school. He loved it.

#7

The first home of the Lansky family was at 33 Chester Street, Brownsville, in the crowded tenement section at the back of Pitkin Avenue, a hotbed of freethinkers and socialists. Nearby on Amboy Street in 1916, Margaret Sanger was to earn thirty days in jail for daring to open America’s first birth control clinic.

#8

The Lansky family moved to New York in 1914, and Max did not make enough money to support his family. Meyer knew that the move was in the wrong direction. He did not like to talk about his father. He considered him a failure by comparison to his grandfather, who had been successful in life.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The Lanskys’ new home was a tenement at 546 Grand Street, a little more than a mile from City Hall and the Athenian pillars of Wall Street. In 1914, the Lower East Side of New York was a fierce, teeming world.

#2

The Jewish community in New York was known for its respect for the law, but many newcomers were not sure that this boasted ethical preeminence stood unimpaired.

#3

The Kehillah, an organization created by Rabbi Judah Magnes in 1909, sent out agents to document vice and crime in the Lower East Side. Their reports revealed a concentration of wrongdoing around Grand Street.

#4

The game of craps is based on the odds of two dice coming together to form a certain combination. Meyer Lansky, who was Jewish, had a knack for calculating the odds. He would look over the players’ shoulders and predict which way the odds were swinging.

#5

The young Meyer Lansky learned a valuable lesson from his mother’s loss of five cents: don’t gamble. He spent hours studying the gamblers on the streets of Delancey Street, and he realized that there was more to the game than just the mathematical framework