Opinion > Editor
Scams and scoundrels eroding the Jewish image in 2008
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By Cynthia Dettelbach
Editor
2008 was not a good year for individual Jews in the news. At the top of the list politically is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, currently under investigation for five different crimes; most involve taking or spending money that didn’t belong to him.
Stateside, there was Eliot Spitzer, the married, former governor of New York who zealously down prostitution rings only to be caught consorting with a prostitute. Talk about a double standard!
Then there are the Rubashkins of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Postville, Iowa, who were the largest suppliers of glatt kosher meat in the country. At their Postville Agriprocessors plant, they employed undocumented workers including children, paid their employees poorly, and subjected them to often deplorable health and safety conditions. Not so glatt kosher, that.
On a local level, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann resigned in disgrace following allegations that he had an extramarital affair with a subordinate and that several of his staffers were involved in a sexual harassment scandal.
But for the sheer financial enormity of his crimes and the unfeeling chutzpah with which they were committed, no one comes close to New York investor Bernard Madoff. On an ironic note that would have pleased Charles Dickens (who often named his characters by their defining character trait), Madoff made off with some $50 billion of duped investors’ money.
Countries, organizations and individuals trusted him with their hard-earned funds only to wake up one morning last month to find those funds were not worth the phony stock reports they were printed on. In short, they were the victims of Madoff’s fraudulent, almost impossible-to-believe Ponzi scheme.
The man at ground zero of what may be one of Wall Street’s largest-ever frauds was an active, well-known member of the upper-class Jewish community. He was lionized for his own philanthropy and financial expertise, everywhere from New York’s esteemed Yeshiva University (YU) to the lush golf courses and watering holes of Palm Beach, Fla. His make-believe world fell apart when the overall decline in the stock market (and Madoff’s two sons) unmasked the Oz-like financial wizard behind the curtain.
Particularly hard-hit, financially and psychologically, were Jewish investors. They include Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel and Mortimer Zuckerman, whose respective charitable foundations lost millions. The Lappin Charitable Foundation had to close its doors as a result of its losses, while American Jewish Congress, the federations of Los Angeles and Greater Washington, Hadassah, and YU took major hits. At YU, Madoff served as a respected board member and treasurer. Treasurer!!
Madoff preyed where he prayed, preyed where he played.
An article in The Jerusalem Post estimates that Madoff wiped out at least $600 million in Jewish charitable funds, with unconfirmed losses totaling up to $1.5 billion. This figure doesn’t take into account the billions lost by individual and family investors, “many of whom were the primary donors to Jewish schools, synagogues and communal charities,” notes the Post.
“I don’t think there will be a single institution of Jewish life that will go unaffected” by the Madoff scam, Avraham Infeld, president of the collapsed Chais Family Foundation of California, told the Post. “Nobody can sit by the side and say, ‘This will pass.’ It’s not going to pass.”
This all comes during a recession, when even people and institutions not invested with Madoff are also suffering financial reverses. At the same time, the need to help Jews sucker-punched by job layoffs, home foreclosures, declining 401(k)s and other economic woes is greater than ever.
Describing to the Post the impact of Madoff’s schemes, Jonathan Sarna, a scholar of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said, “I know of nothing (in history) on this scale.”
He also predicted that the handful of “cowboy” mega-donors upon whom the Jewish world has depended for programs like birthright israel or Holocaust museums (precisely the kind of people who invested with Madoff) won’t have “enough money to sustain all the institutions and initiatives (they have) created.” That will be the challenge for a younger generation, whose wealth – and possibly interests – are invested elsewhere.
On the Sunday I began writing this column, I also read in The New York Times magazine a brief biography of Irena Sendler, who died in 2008 at the age of 98. When she was in her 30s, Sendler, a Catholic Pole, ferried Jewish babies and children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Sendler, and the dozens of like-minded women who worked with her, are credited with saving an estimated 2,500 young lives.
The Gestapo arrested Sendler in 1943. Although she spent three months in prison being tortured and beaten, having both legs broken and her death sentence pronounced, she still “revealed nothing.”
Asked years later why she put her life on the line to save Jewish children, this indomitable woman, barely five foot tall, answered, because “my heart told me to.”
I don’t presume to know what was in Bernard Madoff’s black heart when he willfully cheated and ultimately “killed” many Jewish investors and institutions. Neither Madoff’s life nor his livelihood was in danger when he was ferrying money from his victims and hiding his evil acts from those who trusted him.
Sendler proves, as Anne Frank believed, that there are truly good people in the world. Madoff proves that being Jewish, smart, and, within his own set, “one of the boys” is not sufficient insurance against greed and gross wrongdoing.
Let’s hope 2009 affords us all a cleaner slate.
cdettelbach@cjn.org
Stateside, there was Eliot Spitzer, the married, former governor of New York who zealously down prostitution rings only to be caught consorting with a prostitute. Talk about a double standard!
Then there are the Rubashkins of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Postville, Iowa, who were the largest suppliers of glatt kosher meat in the country. At their Postville Agriprocessors plant, they employed undocumented workers including children, paid their employees poorly, and subjected them to often deplorable health and safety conditions. Not so glatt kosher, that.
On a local level, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann resigned in disgrace following allegations that he had an extramarital affair with a subordinate and that several of his staffers were involved in a sexual harassment scandal.
But for the sheer financial enormity of his crimes and the unfeeling chutzpah with which they were committed, no one comes close to New York investor Bernard Madoff. On an ironic note that would have pleased Charles Dickens (who often named his characters by their defining character trait), Madoff made off with some $50 billion of duped investors’ money.
Countries, organizations and individuals trusted him with their hard-earned funds only to wake up one morning last month to find those funds were not worth the phony stock reports they were printed on. In short, they were the victims of Madoff’s fraudulent, almost impossible-to-believe Ponzi scheme.
The man at ground zero of what may be one of Wall Street’s largest-ever frauds was an active, well-known member of the upper-class Jewish community. He was lionized for his own philanthropy and financial expertise, everywhere from New York’s esteemed Yeshiva University (YU) to the lush golf courses and watering holes of Palm Beach, Fla. His make-believe world fell apart when the overall decline in the stock market (and Madoff’s two sons) unmasked the Oz-like financial wizard behind the curtain.
Particularly hard-hit, financially and psychologically, were Jewish investors. They include Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel and Mortimer Zuckerman, whose respective charitable foundations lost millions. The Lappin Charitable Foundation had to close its doors as a result of its losses, while American Jewish Congress, the federations of Los Angeles and Greater Washington, Hadassah, and YU took major hits. At YU, Madoff served as a respected board member and treasurer. Treasurer!!
Madoff preyed where he prayed, preyed where he played.
An article in The Jerusalem Post estimates that Madoff wiped out at least $600 million in Jewish charitable funds, with unconfirmed losses totaling up to $1.5 billion. This figure doesn’t take into account the billions lost by individual and family investors, “many of whom were the primary donors to Jewish schools, synagogues and communal charities,” notes the Post.
“I don’t think there will be a single institution of Jewish life that will go unaffected” by the Madoff scam, Avraham Infeld, president of the collapsed Chais Family Foundation of California, told the Post. “Nobody can sit by the side and say, ‘This will pass.’ It’s not going to pass.”
This all comes during a recession, when even people and institutions not invested with Madoff are also suffering financial reverses. At the same time, the need to help Jews sucker-punched by job layoffs, home foreclosures, declining 401(k)s and other economic woes is greater than ever.
Describing to the Post the impact of Madoff’s schemes, Jonathan Sarna, a scholar of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said, “I know of nothing (in history) on this scale.”
He also predicted that the handful of “cowboy” mega-donors upon whom the Jewish world has depended for programs like birthright israel or Holocaust museums (precisely the kind of people who invested with Madoff) won’t have “enough money to sustain all the institutions and initiatives (they have) created.” That will be the challenge for a younger generation, whose wealth – and possibly interests – are invested elsewhere.
On the Sunday I began writing this column, I also read in The New York Times magazine a brief biography of Irena Sendler, who died in 2008 at the age of 98. When she was in her 30s, Sendler, a Catholic Pole, ferried Jewish babies and children out of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Sendler, and the dozens of like-minded women who worked with her, are credited with saving an estimated 2,500 young lives.
The Gestapo arrested Sendler in 1943. Although she spent three months in prison being tortured and beaten, having both legs broken and her death sentence pronounced, she still “revealed nothing.”
Asked years later why she put her life on the line to save Jewish children, this indomitable woman, barely five foot tall, answered, because “my heart told me to.”
I don’t presume to know what was in Bernard Madoff’s black heart when he willfully cheated and ultimately “killed” many Jewish investors and institutions. Neither Madoff’s life nor his livelihood was in danger when he was ferrying money from his victims and hiding his evil acts from those who trusted him.
Sendler proves, as Anne Frank believed, that there are truly good people in the world. Madoff proves that being Jewish, smart, and, within his own set, “one of the boys” is not sufficient insurance against greed and gross wrongdoing.
Let’s hope 2009 affords us all a cleaner slate.
cdettelbach@cjn.org
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