Edward "Monk" Eastman was an American gangster who founded and led the Eastman Gang in the late 19th and early 20th century; it became one of the most powerful street gangs in the city. His aliases included Joseph "Joe" Morris, Joe Marvin, William "Bill" Delaney, and Edward "Eddie" Delaney. Eastman is considered to be one of the last of the 19th-century New York City gangsters who preceded the rise of Arnold Rothstein and the Jewish mob. Later, more sophisticated, organized criminal enterprises also included the Italian American Cosa Nostra.
1903 NYPD mugshot of Monk Eastman, taken from newspaper
Paul Kelly, illustration by William Oberhardt, 1909
Monk Eastman, circa 1910–1920
The 1920 military funeral procession of Monk Eastman in New York City
Jewish-American organized crime
Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In media and popular culture, it has variously been referred to as the Jewish Mob, the Jewish Mafia, the Kosher Mob, the Kosher Mafia, the Yiddish Connection, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian cosa nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
Some Kosher Mafia members numbered in police reports
The Siegel family's memorial plaque in the Bialystoker Synagogue.
Meyer Lansky in 1958