Madoff

As if the current economic situation wasn't enough of an impetus to bring the "white-wing"-ers out of the woodwork blaming the Jews for everything, now comes a bonafide scandal involving a committed and involved Orthodox Jew. I couldn't have even begun to formulate a response to these events; then I saw this from Naomi Ragen.

In the aftermath, the rise of anti-Semitic chatter on the internet has
reached new, ominous levels. But I read one talkback--on a Madoff site full of vicious anti-Semitic remarks by seemingly educated and 'liberal' people -- which made sense. The writer said that it wasn't fair to blame all Jews, but it was certainly true that there were many, many Jews who were talented in business and finance, and therefore disproportionately represented in those fields. What a shame, therefore, he wrote, that the Jewish community had not made more of an effort to instill the values of the Torah in its members, which would have meant decency and honesty and absolute integrity would have guided the worlds of business and finance, saving the world so much misery.

Well done.

This was my repsonse.

It obviously has not been made clear in the general culture that Torah stands as much for fiduciary as ritual purity, and the fault, in this case, is not with the anti-semites. When one says "values of Torah", "decency and honesty and absolute integrity" are rarely the first things to come to anyone's mind. Even among the most decent Torah-observant.

The Orthodox community and its institutions need to come up with a foolproof series of background checks and prophylactic policies vis-a-vis philantropists regarding their fiduciary reliability before exminaing their religious bona fides (easier said than done, but nonetheless).

I would even go as far as coming up with a method of public shaming of proven thieves, even creating a virtual "mitzvah" of reporting them to the secular authorities. However, we see how much luck we've had in rooting out sexual predators; how much moreso rooting out financial malefactors, who usually can buy their way out of anything until they run out of money. Like Madoff.