THE POLITICAL ANIMAL

In the wake of the Madoff scandal, many Jews are worried that that age-old scourge known as anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head again.

For those of you not in the know, Beranrd L. Madoff, a businessman and a former chairman of the NASDAQ, is being charged with securities fraud. All told, the guy “Madoff” with approximately $50 billion in cash and securities, and has recently been anointed with the title of “The Most Hated Man in New York.” 

Jennifer Peltz of Myway reports that “Of all the words that have been used to describe the Bernard L. Madoff scandal, the most emotionally charged may be ‘Jewish.’”

Madoff is not just some financial con artist who happens to have an Ashkenazic surname. Throughout his highly successful career, he cast himself as a philanthropist to Jewish causes and many of his victims are Jewish institutions and charitable organizations.

Of course, con artists who prey upon their own religious communities come from all backgrounds. However, someone needs to tell that to the jerks who have posted virulently anti-Semitic comments about the Madoff scandal on the internet.

“The Anti-Defamation League cites a spike in anti-Semitic comments online after Madoff’s Dec. 11 arrest,” writes Peltz. “A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented the case as ‘the answer to every Jew-hater’s wish list. And the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, David A. Harris, wrote a letter to The New York Times criticizing what he saw as ‘a striking emphasis’ on Madoff’s faith in one of the paper’s many stories about the scandal.”

“The case is fodder for the bigots,” Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL’s national director, told an interviewer for The Associated Press. “It’s both embarrassing and it’s painful.”

While I’m sure most people would rather not mention the guy’s religion, there’s just one little problem.

“It’s difficult to describe the case in any detail without mentioning Madoff’s religion,” Peltz continues. “The 70-year-old money manager and former Nasdaq stock market chairman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, much of it to Jewish causes. And many of the known victims of his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, are big names in Jewish life.  Yeshiva
University, one of the nation’s foremost Jewish institutions of higher education, lost $110 million; Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, lost $90 million; director Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation acknowledged unspecified losses; and a $15 million foundation established by Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel was wiped out. Jewish federations and hospitals have lost millions and some foundations have had to close.”

While it should be apparent to anyone with common sense and a modicum of decency that no group should be condemned for the actions of a few, the AJC is wrong to criticize the New York Time’s “emphasis” on Mr. Jackoff’s religion. This smacks of hypersensitivity. Given the above, it’s pretty clear that Madoff’s faith (and perversion of it) played a significant role in his deception. As for the ant-Semites, they will express their poisonous prejudices no matter what happens. Downplaying someone’s Jewish identity or omitting it altogether isn’t going to change that.

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