Word: gonif
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...Madoff's wife and sons in the scam. The author is more interested than Arvedlund in Madoff the man and in the emotional aspect of this financial soap opera. He has perfect pitch when it comes to the agony and shame of the Jewish community for finding such a gonif (Yiddish for thief) in its midst...
...death, Wolff blurts out "Thank God." Feeling both self-righteous and ashamed, he decides to plow back into the past, trying to find the man who both made and ruined large swatches of his son's life. A cousin stares at him and says, "He was a gonif, a schnorrer. He was just a bum. That's all he ever was." Wolff decides that the man he once adored must have been more than that...
Kaplan too owns the stage. In everything I have seen him do before this show he has played the Flatbush gonif, the king of the muzuzahed one-liners. In Flea he acts. Eyes, face, tummy--everything is part of the comic arsenal. Kaplan's timing and moves are astonishing. He never walks but rather changes from shuffle to trudge to leap to glide. And like the true master of high comedy he never bruises a line or gesture by offering it up before the audience is ready...
Tony Manetta (Frank Sinatra) is a nogoodnik of a widower, a sort of amiable gonif (the names have been changed, but the characterizations are still Jewish). He is about to lose his sweaty hold on a two-bit Miami Beach hotel, but Big Shot Frankie. looking to turn a fast buck, spends his time trying to promote grandiose business ideas, romancing a far-out bongo-banging broad who lives at the top of the stairs, and treating his eleven-year-old son like a grownup. Faced with eviction, Frankie calls on his apoplectic brother (Edward G. Robinson), a rich...
Greenburg turned state's evidence. Moe, Gail and Miller were charged with armed robbery. Gail pleaded guilty, then attempted suicide. Last week, Moe the gonif and Miller, his hired punk, were convicted. Yiddish for thief...