Mottke, The Thief

Long before “Little Caesar” and “Public Enemy,” Sholem Asch challenged the sensibilities of theYiddish audience with this womb-to-tomb tale of the rise and fall of a Jewish gangster.

Deprived of his mother’s milk, beaten by his father, Mottke is driven by hunger and fear into a life of thievery, pimping and murder. He becomes the king of the Warsaw sexual underworld where gullible girls are promised romance and prosperity only to be shipped off to a life of degradation in the brothels of Buenos Aires. In the end he is brought down by the same belief in “pure” love that enticed his victims.

Asch’s naturalistic depiction of the callous brutality of the Jewish criminal class shocked a readership that was used to folktales, humor and melodramas. He was criticized for revealing the unsavory underside of Jewish life. But the novel was a huge success and a stage version played all over the world.