Continuing my non-Italian streak, I figured there might be synergies to reading Blood & Volume by Dave Copeland about the Israeli “Mafia” after finishing Mark G’s book outlining Russian Organized Crime given the former largely hailed from the Eastern Bloc. I could not have been more wrong. If the cover gives you some reservation, it is for good reason. It too made me nervous when I saw it feature the author in his Goodfellas Halloween costume. As you might guess by now, this was Dave’s freshman debut, and it showed. In solidarity with the book, I will also keep this review nice and short.

 One cannot knock this book down completely and some credit is warranted given to date this has been the only long-form attempt at a narrative describing the (brief) history of Israeli organized crime in New York City. You just wouldn’t be able to piece together anything close by just organizing and summarizing available newspaper accounts. Another interesting angle the book offers is that beyond just basing the account primarily on the main subject’s recollections (in this case Ron Gonen) supplemented by other interviews, primary, and secondary sources, a fair amount of the narrative came from Ron’s wife, Honey Tesman and as such provides a more fleshed out account of the home lives of criminals, and their destructiveness. There is also a pretty decent photo section showing a lot of their family photos together. Finally, the book is really short and an easy read. I basically knocked it out in one sitting and so if you have a goal/resolution on how many books you want to read this year, this is a good option to pad the count with.

Blood & Volume’s biggest downfall is the person Dave chose to anchor the narrative on, Ron Gonen… Simply put, he was just the most uninteresting criminal who got his own book. Some mob biography “protagonists” such as Phil Leonetti or Alfonse Al D’Arco exhibit a certain tragedy that one can emphasize with. Others, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, such as Anthony Casso, who despite having no redeemable qualities, still evoke a visceral reaction from readers from their malice and remorselessness. In all cases, they make you feel something. Ron Gonen, however, left no discernible impression. An anthropomorphic wet mop. His entire story is that, after a short stint as a burglar in Germany, he became a mid-level cocaine dealer in New York, peddling grams and eventually kilograms to the city’s upper-middle class and other wholesalers. That’s pretty much it. A criminal mastermind, he used an elderly lady living in social housing as a drug mule. Oh, he was also addicted to crack for a couple of years in the midst of his drug trafficking career. Oops almost forgot, his wife was the one who got him addicted to crack and continued to be a crack addict for the duration of their tumultuous marriage. That was Ron Gonen’s life in the 1980s.

The title of the book is also somewhat misleading. There was not a lot of “inside” (insight) into the Big Apple’s Israeli Mafia. After all, Ron wasn’t technically even in it, he was just a peripheral character who mostly interacted with one of its members, Ran Ephraim.  The organization itself consisted of maybe a dozen members and was overhyped by the author. There was no chance it would supplant the Italians as the preeminent organized crime group in the Tri-State area (due to sheer demographics alone). At some point he claimed that they were some of the largest heroin traffickers, only to then say they shipped 4 kilograms at a time… Yeah, the Southeast Asian gangs, Italians, and even the Russians were moving quantities far beyond that. Speaking of “Russians”, there was a complete lack of any discussion addressing the Israeli’s relations and interactions with Soviet/Eastern Bloc organized crime, despite the fact that many in the gang hailed from there. Ron himself came to Israel by way of Ukraine (with Polish heritage) and Brooklyn/Brighton Beach was not lacking in criminal Jewish Ukrainians at the time. At least the Italian Mafia was mentioned on occasion, although seemingly their only concrete interaction came via Frank Sciortino, a Colombo member. This was all a bit puzzling to me since by the end of the book, you came to the impression that half the gang cooperated. Maybe the lack of details is just indicative of how thin the organization really was. Seems it hardly qualified as a Mafia.

Maybe the author was fresh off watching Death Proof and feeling inspired by Quintin Tarantino, because he kept jumping around the timeline. Yet unlike the director, Dave hasn’t at that point mastered the art of non-linear storytelling and certain sections of the book felt jarring due to it. I’m not even going to bother with some of the errors found in this book, but to give you a hint, Michael Franzese appeared as Michael Luchese in the book…

Well, if you must read about the Israeli Mafia, I guess you can go ahead and read Blood & Volume. But be forewarned, this book will be unsatisfying and leave you with more questions than answers. Ron was not a compelling criminal character (although kudos to him, it seemed he adjusted very well to the WITSEC life). The Israeli Mafia was not very interesting, just a group of short, hot-headed Israelis bickering over drugs. I was not impressed.