Jonathan Tobin has joined Commentary as Executive Editor, and he has the lead essay in the new edition.
The Madoff Scandal and the Future of American Jewry
Tobin says the long term damage done by the Madoff fraud to Jewish foundations and organizations funding Jewish causes is a far greater problem than the fact that Madoff's Jewishness serves as fodder for anti-semites. An excerpt...
In the days following the revelation of the alleged $50 billion scam, the willingness of the press to refer to Madoff’s Jewishness set off alarms in a community uniquely sensitive about the way in which its members have historically been singled out for opprobrium. The theme of Jewish financial skullduggery is, after all, a familiar one in the canon of anti-Semitic invective. Madoff’s religion and his nefarious business practices were quickly intertwined by many hate-inspired Internet posters, which in turn aroused concerns at the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee that the Madoff moment might mark the beginning of a new and uniquely dangerous wave of anti-Semitism.Posted by dan at February 1, 2009 3:48 PMBut the specifically Jewish crisis that has been set off by the arrest and revelations has little to do with the rantings of anti-Semites on the Internet, who will always find something to which they can attach and insinuate their pre-existing perspective. After all, many of Madoff’s victims were not Gentiles entrapped by a wily Hebrew, but were themselves Jews.
Nor were these victims the only Jews harmed by Madoff. It soon became clear that he had caused vast sums from Jewish charities whose endowments had been invested, directly or indirectly, with Madoff’s firm to vanish. The numbers are unimaginably large. Yeshiva University, of which Madoff had served as a trustee, initially said its losses amounted to $110 million. Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization, reported that $90 million was lost in the wreckage of Madoff’s collapse. The American Technion Society, which aids Israel’s Institute of Technology in Haifa, put its losses at $72 million. Amid a long list of other groups that have admitted to losing money were the American Jewish Congress, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, the United Community Endowment Fund in Washington, D.C., the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the Robert I. Lappin Foundation, and the Chais Family Foundation..