Famous Jews: Bernard Madoff
Freedom of Expression
before God after death will be asked a series of questions, the first
one of which is, “Were you honest in your business dealings?” But it
is the Ten Commandments that have weighed most heavily on the mind of
Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles in light of the sins
for which Bernard L. Madoff stands accused.
by ROBIN POGREBIN
“You shouldn’t steal,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “And this is theft on a
global scale.”
The full scope of the misdeeds to which Mr. Madoff has confessed in
swindling individuals and charitable groups has yet to be calculated,
and he is far from being convicted. But Jews all over the country are
already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say
goes beyond the financial to the theological and the personal.
Here is a Jew accused of cheating Jewish organizations trying to help
other Jews, they say, and of betraying the trust of Jews and violating
the basic tenets of Jewish law. A Jew, they say, who seemed to
exemplify the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes of the thieving Jewish
banker.
So in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless
conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of
contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but
because they say Mr. Madoff has brought shame on their people in
addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind
Jewish communities.
“Jews have these familial ties,” Rabbi Wolpe said. “It’s not solely a
shared belief; it’s a sense of close communal bonds, and in the same
way that your family can embarrass you as no one else can, when a Jew
does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy. I’d like to believe someone
raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better
than this.”
Among the apparent victims of Mr. Madoff were many Jewish educational
institutions and charitable causes that lost fortunes in his
investments, including Yeshiva University, Hadassah, the Jewish
Community Centers Association of North America and the Elie Wiesel
Foundation for Humanity. On Dec. 14, the Chais Family Foundation,
which worked on educational projects in Israel, was forced to shut
down because of losses in Madoff investments. Many of Mr. Madoff’s
individual investors were Jewish and supported Jewish causes,
apparently drawn to him precisely because of his own communal
involvement and because he radiated the comfortable sense of being one
of them.
“The Jewish world is not going to be the same for a while,” said Rabbi
Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York.
Jews are also grappling with the implications of Mr. Madoff’s deeds on
their public image, what one rabbi referred to as the “shanda factor,”
using the Yiddish term for an embarrassing shame or disgrace. (in
front of the Goyim....you missed that bit Shylock) As Bradley Burston,
a columnist for haaretz.com, the English-language Web site of the
Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote on Dec. 17: “The anti-Semite’s new
Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater’s wish list.
The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn’t have come up with
anything to rival this.”
The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement that Mr. Madoff’s
arrest had prompted an outpouring of anti-Semitic comments on Web
sites around the world, most repeating familiar tropes about Jews and
money. Abraham H. Foxman, the group’s national director, said that
canard goes back hundreds of years, but noted that anti-Semites do not
need facts to be anti-Semitic.
“We’re not immune from having thieves and people who engage in fraud,”
Mr. Foxman said in an interview, disputing any notion that Mr. Madoff
should be seen as emblematic. “Why, because he happens to be Jewish,
he should have a conscience?”
He added that Mr. Madoff’s victims extended well beyond the Jewish
community.
In addition to theft, the Torah discusses another kind of stealing,
geneivat da’at, the Hebrew term for deception or stealing someone’s
mind. “In the rabbinic mind-set, he’s guilty of two sins: one is
theft, and the other is deception,” said Burton L. Visotzky, a
professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
“The fact that he stole from Jewish charities puts him in a special
circle of hell,”(Unlike if it was just only stealing from the Goyim,
then that would be heaven?) Rabbi Visotzky added. “He really
undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it’s built on
trust. There is a wonderful rabbinic saying — often misapplied — that
all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that
if a Jew takes a loan out, in some ways the whole Jewish community
guarantees it.”
Several rabbis said they were reminded of Esau, a figure of mistrust
in the Bible. According to a rabbinic interpretation, Esau, upon
embracing his brother Jacob after 20 years apart, was actually
frisking him to see what he could steal. “The saying goes that, when
Esau kisses you,” Rabbi Visotzky said, “check to make sure your teeth
are still there.”
Rabbi Kalmanofsky said he was struck by reports that Mr. Madoff had
tried to give bonus payments to his employees just before he was
arrested, that he was moved to do something right even as he was about
to be charged with doing so much wrong. “The small-scale thought for
people who work for him amidst this large-scale fraud — what is the
dissonance between that sense of responsibility and the gross sense of
irresponsibility?” he said.
In his sermon last week, Rabbi Kalmanofsky described Mr. Madoff as the
antithesis of true piety.
“I said, what it means to be a religious person is to be terrified of
the possibility that you’re going to harm someone else,” he said.
Rabbi Kalmanofsky said Judaism had highly developed mechanisms for not
letting people control money without ample checks and balances. When
tzedakah, or charity, is collected, it must be done so in pairs.
“These things are supposed to be done in the public eye,” Rabbi
Kalmanofsky said, “so there is a high degree of confidence that people
are behaving in honorable ways.”(Come on Rabbi who are you kidding?)
While the Madoff affair has resonated powerfully among Jews, some say
it actually stands for a broader dysfunction in the business world.
“The Bernie Madoff story has become a Jewish story,” said Rabbi
Jennifer Krause, the author of “The Answer: Making Sense of Life, One
Question at a Time,” “but I do see it in the much greater context of a
human drama that is playing out in sensationally terrible ways in
America right now.”
“The Talmud teaches that a person who only looks out for himself and
his own interests will eventually be brought to poverty,” (Unless he
is ripping off the Goyim only) she added. “Unfortunately, this is the
metadrama of what’s happening in our country right now. When you have
too many people who are only looking out for themselves and they
forget the other piece, which is to look out for others, we’re brought
to poverty.”
According to Jewish tradition, the last question people are asked when
they meet God after dying is, “Did you hope for redemption?”
Rabbi Wolpe said he did not believe Mr. Madoff could ever make amends.
“It is not possible for him to atone for all the damage he did, and I
don’t even think that there is a punishment that is commensurate with
the crime, for the wreckage of lives that he’s left behind,” Rabbi
Wolpe said. “The only thing he could do, for the rest of his life, is
work for redemption that he would never achieve.”
gold...@nym.hush.com
wrote:
It's not as if Madoff is the only Wall Street Jew who as stolen
billions of dollars. After all, there's $700 billion dollars handed
over to the cabal including Goldman Sachs AIG and Bear Sterns.
Now there's been a death attributed to Madoff's thievery.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7798533.stm
A French investment manager who put $1.4bn (£1bn) into Bernard
Madoff's fraud-hit scheme has committed suicide in his New York
office, police said.
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, was found sitting at his
desk with both wrists slashed, New York police spokesman Paul Browne
said.
A bottle of sleeping pills was on his desk and a box cutter lay on the
floor.
Mr Madoff is accused of running a $50bn (£34bn) Ponzi scheme that
wiped out investors around the world.
Big funds like Mr Villehuchet's were especially hard hit.
Paris newspaper La Tribune said he spent the past week trying "day and
night to find a way to recoup his investors' money".
Mr Villehuchet, who was married without children, was co-founder of
money manager Access International.