The 18th Amendment was the culmination of a decades long campaign by small-town Protestant Americans who believed that alcohol lay at the core of most big-city social ills, such as crime, vice, and broken families. They felt that a sober America was a greater and more successful America. This view was joyfully expressed by Billy Sunday, a former baseball player turned evangelist. “Goodbye, John Barleycorn,” he exulted. “You were God’s worst enemy. You were hell’s best friend. The reign of tears is over.” How wrong he was.
The ban on alcohol went into effect at midnight, Jan. 16, 1920, and from that moment on it seemed that every American over the age of 12 had to have a drink. Two hundred thousand unlicensed saloons selling illegal, or “bootleg,” whiskey sprang up across the United States. These bars and restaurants were euphemistically called “speakeasies” and “blind pigs.”
I laughed all the way through this historical recollection. The pre-War II American pageant of enormous immigration from Europe, eastern and western, as well as other regions made for some hilarious times. As I read about Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, I could only see it in my mind as an early talkies, black and white, Oliver & Hardy stream of images.
Article 7 of the Volstead Act exempted the production and sale of wine for sacramental purposes. This led to a huge increase in false rabbis who served as conduits for the sale of “sacramental wine.” One Prohibition agent mused that there was no discipline and no control in the Jewish faith. “Anybody can become a rabbi, and the bootlegger has taken advantage of it.” In New York City alone almost 3 million gallons of sacramental wine, more than a gallon for each Jewish man, woman, and child, were consumed during the fiscal year ending June 1924. Many of these so-called “wine rabbis” established fictional congregations in the wine localities of California in order to peddle their wares.
If Jews have nothing else, and that was often the case, they always have an angle. It’s a practice and art learned from centuries of persecution.
Both men were short and fat, each weighing over 200 pounds. They looked nothing like government agents—and certainly nothing like the image later projected in Hollywood movies. But their unassuming appearances proved to be the secret of their success. They became so successful that some speakeasies posted pictures of them as a warning to customers. Hundreds of hilarious newspaper stories were written about the pair and the public enjoyed reading about them.
Izzy Einstein “spoke fluent Yiddish, Italian, Hungarian, German, Bohemian, and Polish.” He could talk his way into any joint anywhere.
Izzy busted one particular Coney Island speakeasy in midwinter by swimming with a polar bear club, and almost froze to death. A concerned Moe rushed the shivering Izzy into the clubhouse. “Quick,” he cried, “some liquor for my friend before he freezes to death.” When the bartender quickly provided the liquor, Moe arrested him.
From the Smithsonian Photographic Archive
Izzy and Moe made such an impression in 20th century American history that Jackie Gleason and Art Carney starred in a made-for-TV movie in 1985 very loosely based on their rip-roaring reputations.
RTWDT.