Jewish gangsters? To many, it's an oxymoron. In the first three decades of the 20th century, however, some of the most powerful people in the American criminal underworld - Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Arnold Rothstein, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Meyer Lansky - were members of the tribe. Their images and those of some other lesser-known gangsters are on display in the exhibit Real Machers: Pat Hamou's Portraits of American Jewish Gangsters, 1900-1945 at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center through May 17.

Some 45 portraits, each with a short biographical sketch, comprise the exhibit.

Curator Wendy Ferguson, director of the Washington DCJCC's Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, thinks that the exhibit may lead to a necessary discussion of Jewish criminals.

Before the show opened yesterday, she already had heard from those who had been alive during period under discussion, as well as from younger people. Some older people expressed irritation about the idea of displaying Jewish gangsters, but others see it as a way to talk about Jewish criminals.

"This is a subject that shouldn't be swept under the rug," the curator says. "We need to admit that part of our community is corrupt, and we need to talk about them," she says, mentioning both Bernard Madoff, who's been charged with masterminding a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "As Jews, we are privileged to critique ourselves. If others do it, they often are called anti-Semitic. We have the responsibility to say part of our community is corrupt, and we need to address this," Ferguson says. The idea for the exhibit came to her when she was in Berlin, touring the area where Jews had lived before World War II, and "got sick of getting carted around to empty spaces where Jews used to be."

She says she's tired of depicting Jews as weak and absent. Real Machers depicts a period where Jews "had more power than the police."

Although conceding that the people portrayed in the exhibit committed despicable crimes, she nonetheless notes that they often helped their communities. "At the time, many police officers were corrupt and would not protect Jews," she says, "and therefore it became their job."

As a result, she notes, people often looked up to the gangsters for protecting the weak members of society.

In a statement in the exhibit, graphic artist Pat Hamou notes that there is something about gangsters that appeals to some people.

"They were bucking the system, operating outside of what was considered the norm," he says. He says his goal is not to glorify them "in any sort of positive light outside of their colorful character, their chutzpah and how it may change perceptions of Jews during the period."

Ferguson also denies that the exhibit makes gangsters into heroes. "Pat's artwork shows them as they were in a realistic portrayal of the tensions they had to live under," she says. "He shows them at face value without glorifying them."

In a related program, the film Lansky (1999) will be screened on Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. at the WDCJCC. Tickets, $10, $9 for JCC members, seniors and students, are available at www.wdcjcc.org.