Emanuel Congregation
5959 North Sheridan Road, Chicago
Social hour with kosher refreshments and book-signing to follow
CJHS members and Emanuel members Free
Non-members $10 per person
Alex Garel-Frantzen’s book, Gangsters & Organized Crime in Jewish Chicago (The History Press, 2013), concerns the early years of the twentieth century, when the harsh environment of the Maxwell Street immigrant ghetto produced a proliferation of Jewish gangsters involved in everything from labor racketeering to “white slavery.” Garel-Frantzen is a student at the University of Illinois College of Law, where he is a juris doctor candidate set to graduate in 2015. His research for the book was based on contemporary newspaper articles and editorials in the Chicago Tribune and the Yiddish language press, as well as studies by historians, sociologists, and reformers. His idea for the project was sparked by memories of that colorful era as related to him by his great-uncle.
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