If you go to the Jewish Museum of Florida, in the part of Miami Beach that I call (not knowing any better) South of South Beach, which is housed in an old synagogue, you see large stained glass windows which honor families and individuals who gave substantial amounts of money to the synagogue. One of the most prominent of these congregants was a man named Meyer Lansky.

Meyer Lansky, I assume, must have virtually commuted (not “virtually” as we think of it today) between Miami Beach and Havana as he acted as the financial brain (we would today call him the CFO, I guess) of the Mafia. But everything he did was not bad.

I mention this, because I recently was talking about this museum with a friend who winters in South Beach and knows the museum well. She told me another story about Lansky. I don’t remember all of the details, but the details are unimportant. So if you want to retell this story, feel free to alter it any way you want, as long as the main point remains. Here goes: My friend has a friend whose grandmother had a friend who rented an apartment in South Beach back when South Beach was not yet South Beach and the museum was still a synagogue. Lansky had an apartment in the same building. After her husband passed away, she found herself in financial difficulties. She had known Lansky from her building or  from the synagogue, although I don’t know if they were besties or only nodded to each other on the High Holidays (this detail may be important to a biographer, but not to us, and this is a detail about which, I am sorry to say, you are not free to speculate). But the point of the story is that Lansky took pity on her and helped her financially for the rest of her life. Not only that, but whenever he went grocery shopping, he would knock on her door and ask her what she needed. That Meyer Lansky! What a great guy!

Here is Meyer:

Now don’t think this is just a Jewish thing. Think of Alphonse Capone, an Italian Midwesterner with whom Lansky closely worked. Capone, it has been said again and again, was really good to his mother. But, it’s more than that. Capone established a large network of free soup kitchens throughout Chicago during the Depression. And (here is something you don’t know): It was Capone who pressed for expiration dates on milk bottles, after one of his relatives took ill. Don’t believe me? Google it.

Who else? Mussolini? He made the trains run on time. And this was no small feat. He did it in Italy, for God’s sake. Hitler? He built the autobahns, created national parks, and made sure the Wagner festivals at Bayreuth continued doing the darkest of times. And he gave Aryan women money when they had children. Okay, so his bad stuff massively eclipsed this and brought ruin to everything he touched, but still…..

This, of course, leads me to Donald Trump. Like all the other bad players throughout history, Donald Trump, you may be sure, has also done some good things. But the fact is…..I just can’t think of any.