I find their history very interesting.

The Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam of September 1654 was the first organized Jewish migration to North America. It comprised 23 Sephardi Jews, refugees "big and little" of families fleeing persecution by the Portuguese Inquisition after the conquest of Dutch Brazil.

When the Protestant Dutch Republic revolted against Catholic Spain in what became the Eighty Years' War, Portuguese and Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism (conversos or Marranos) began migrating to the northern provinces of the Netherlands.[53] Religious tolerance, the freedom of conscience to practice one's religion without impediment, was a core Dutch Protestant value. These Sephardic migrants established a thriving community in Amsterdam, which became known as the "Dutch Jerusalem"[54] Three Sephardic congregations merged and built a huge synagogue, the Portuguese Synagogue, opening in 1675. Prosperous Jewish merchants built opulent houses among successful non-Jewish merchants, since there was no restriction of Jews to particular residential quarters. The Iberian Jews strongly identified both as Jews and as ethnically Portuguese, calling themselves "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation".[55] Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish merchants created a huge trade network in the Americas, with Portuguese Jews emigrating to the Caribbean and to Brazil.[56] Ashkenazi Jews settled in Amsterdam as well but were generally poorer than the Sephardim and dependent of their charity. However, Amsterdam's prosperity faltered in the late seventeenth century, as did the fortunes and number of Sephardic Jews, while the Ashkenazi Jews' numbers continued to rise and have dominated the Netherlands ever since.

Havana Italian Jews are also known as Bnei Roma.

The 23 Separdis who landed in New Amsterdam (now New York) from Recife, Brazil, in 1654 were refugees from the Dutch/Portuguese War. Though the Dutch were generally tolerant of Jews, the governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant (whose name and image adorn as many public places in New York as Robert E. Lee’s in Richmond, VA), was a virulent bigot who wanted to eject them. He was overruled by the governing Dutch West India Company. But, he prohibited Jews from building a synagogue and serving in the militia. He slapped them with a special tax. He also called them “the deceitful race, such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.”

The irony is that Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan is considered the city's top science and engineering HS. For decades, a large percentage of its students were Jewish kids who had no idea of the anti-Semitism of the guy whom their beloved, high-prestige school was named after.

Nice addition Turnbull !

Peter Stuyvesant is also a cigarette brand of Reemtsma in Hamburg , a German subsidiary of the Imperial Tobacco Group (ITG).

Guys like Stuyvesant wanted to keep the Jews under control, but also liked the money they would make.

In the Dutch Antilles and Suriname you can still find a lot of Jewish history/influences.

Actually when Peter Stuyvesant and his successor Mathias Beck took over the directorship of the WIC in Curaçao around 1645 the living conditions on the islands improved.

The worrying food situation received particular attention: the WIC was a company that had to make a profit and importing food was a costly business. That is why Stuyvesant invited Sephardic Jews during his reign.

They could start plantations on Curaçao to produce local food. However, once they arrived on the island, a number of Jewish families also became active in trade. The way in which the Company wanted to use Curaçao also changed: at first, privateering was an important argument for taking possession of Curaçao, but in practice it turned out that it yielded too little. However, due to the knowledge gained in Brazil about the transatlantic slave trade, the WIC realized that Curaçao was ideal as a regional slave market . This eventually led to three groups of inhabitants on the island: the remaining Caquetio , the Christian and Jewish Europeans and the enslaved Africans, whom the WIC brought from areas on the West African coast from Guinea to Angola. They formed the population from the second half of the seventeenth century.

Like the Irish before them, and the Italians after them, Jewish gangs dominated urban rackets for the same reasons as other ethnic gangs: Lack of opportunity in the legitimate world coupled with a surfeit of opportunities to exploit their fellow ethnics and feed their vices. Jewish gangs dominated NYC rackets before Prohibition, much of it with "Black Hand" tactics usually associated with Italian gangsters.

One of the reasons is that, in Eastern Europe, where most American Jews trace their ancestry, Jews were viciously persecuted, segregated, confined, and stripped of basic rights. They were never permitted to be citizens, never permitted to own land, and anything they did own was plundered in the pogroms that decimated Jewish ghettos and settlements every few years. With no experience of land owning or farming, Jews settled in cities in America, unlike the English, Scots-Irish, Germans and Scandinavians, who settled on the land. Well, you can't shake down your neighbors if you can't see the smoke from their chimneys. But, teeming, overcrowded urban neighborhoods were ripe breeding grounds for racketeers and extortionists.

Another reason: Unlike Italians, who came to America with their families, and Irish, who married late, Jews generally sent the oldest male ahead to make his way in America before sending for the rest of the family. They got lonely for female companionship, which is why Jewish racketeers thrived on pimping and prostitution before Prohibition.

Why does it appear that second generation Jews pretty much went into lawful professions to earn a living while a certain amount of Italian second generation followed the same path as their fathers or grandfathers, or sometimes became the first in their family to get involved with the mob?
Of course it also seems that the highest level Italian guys mostly had sons that went straight and if they were involved with their fathers it was often in a legal enterprise.
I think that without movies like the Godfather there would have been few that went that way since that movie. At least a few less

Jewish gangsters took advantage of two big opportunities after Prohibition was repealed:

The first was in NYC's Garment District, where Louis (Lepke) Buholter put together a gigantic monopoly, controlling both labor unions and manufacturers, as well as trucking into and out of the District. Everything that came into the District as pelts of fur and bolts of cloth, was made into wearables, and went out of the District, was under his thumb. He was so big that the first Federal charge against him was violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which put his operation in the same leagued with Standard Oil and US Steel. He had Mob partners, too. After he went on the lam to escape a murder rap, and was later executed, much of his empire went to what are now the Gambino and Lucchese families.

The second was Nevada gambling. Work began on the gigantic Hoover Dam in March 1931, bringing 10 thousand workers to a site only 20 miles from Vegas. The state legislators knew they'd gamble in Vegas's wide open red light district, so they legalized gambling that same month
to tax the revenues. Jewish gangsters, who dominated the booze business in many cities, now saw a big opportunity. In that first month, Nevada received ~200 requests for gaming licenses--half the applicants had Jewish surnames. With repeal of Prohibition looming, big time booze gangsters like Lansky, Siegel and Dalitz moved right into the state. They built Vegas.

Thats true, Turnbull. And I think its also important to point out that although we cannot make a blanket statement about every Jewish gangster, for the most part, the Jewish fellas who gravitated to organized crime generally viewed it as a "one and done." Meaning, that they jumped into the street because in those days they were in the streets, with little opportunity for upward mobility available to them.

So they took to organized crime as a way to better their lot in life (as most nationalities did who became racketeers) but the big difference is they didn't want that for their children and future generations. I think the same came generally be said for the Irish, etc.

The big difference with those Italians who gravtitated to organized crime was that there existed an 'ancient' criminal fraternity harkening back to their motherland. The Jews and Irish had no such hierarchal structured entity to be absorbed into.

So, for some -- not all -- but for some Italian racketeers it became all too easy to view organized crime as a generational ongoing 'business' rather a steppingstone into legitimacy.

Don't get me wrong, the majority of Italian racketeers and mafiosi didn't want their sons following in their footsteps. But there were enough of them who did. Think Carlo Gambino, Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno, Joe Colombo, Steve Magaddino, etc. The list goes on and on.

American Jews or Jewish Americans are American citizens who are Jewish, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion. According to a 2020 poll conducted by Pew Research, approximately two thirds of American Jews identify as Ashkenazi, 3% identify as Sephardic, and 1% identify as Mizrahi.

BTW contemporary Germany, acknowledging historical responsibility, now hosts a thriving Jewish community.

...but German gov't minister warns Jews not to wear yarmulkas or other obvious Jewish identifications in public for fear of violence.

That's right the German chancellor voices concern about "neo-Nazis and their dark networks." There are also several radical islamist groups active.

The year 2024 and we're still dealing with this bullshit. It's scary that people never smarten up. And the very fact that Germany still has these sickies bubbling under their surface is a sad commentary.

Before the rise of the Nazis, more than half a million Jews lived in Germany. Currently, about 200,000 Jews or people of Jewish descent live in Germany, making it one of the largest populations in Europe. So their "Final Solution" failed big time.