I don’t know about the nervous twitches in your religious tribe, but in mine we have an expression uttered with Pavlovian reflex in times of stress: Is this good for the Jews?
Partly, this comes from the same kind of self-consciousness familiar to all racial and religious minorities. It says: The others already regard us as outsiders. They already reduce us to stereotypes. Is the current trouble going to reinforce the stereotype?
And now, in the current national anxiety over money, and the finger-pointing toward Wall Street types and others involved in big financial institutions that are now tanking, my Jews are really asking each other that stressful question: Is this bad for us, in ways that the ancient stereotypes attach Jews and money in the most insidious manner?
And the answer is: You have to ask?
The news has gotten particularly bad since the revelations about this Bernie Madoff, the hedge fund hustler who conned a lot of rich people, who were previously considered quite smart, and a lot of organizations, who were previously considered quite wealthy, out of about $50 billion.
Their Madoff money’s all gone now. His sham investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, collapsed last week when federal regulators booked him on charges of masterminding an elaborate con game that defrauded such investors as Swiss banks, asset management companies, the Jewish Federation of Washington, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, individual billionaires and others less wealthy, some of whom have been turned from significant possessors of wealth to owners of nothing more than the homes in which they currently reside.
Madoff, it has been pointed out, is Jewish. Beautiful, an opportunity to trot out all hoary stereotypes about Jews and money.
Also, it has been pointed out, a lot of Madoff’s victims are Jews, including Yeshiva University (on whose School of Business Madoff served as chairman of the board), the American Jewish Congress, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, Stephen Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Mort Zuckerman.
As the New York Times reported, “Around the country, the nonprofit community is reeling from the Madoff scandal. At least [three] foundations have been forced to close their doors, having lost virtually all their assets to what authorities describe as a Ponzi scheme that depended on new investment money to pay off earlier investments.”
So what happens?
Right away, we have the great self-consciousness. BaltimoreJewish.com runs a story headlined, “Jewish World Hit Hard by Madoff Scandal” — though local financial insiders have not pointed to any Baltimore victims — and notes the “elaborate Ponzi scheme is reverberating through the greater financial community in general, and the Jewish world in particular.”
The [British] Independent, in a piece headlined, “Jewish leaders fear anti-Semitic Backlash,” declares, “Israeli and American Jewish leaders said they were concerned that people with an anti-Jewish agenda would focus on Mr. Madoff to foment hatred.”
The piece quotes Ken Jacobson, deputy director of the Anti-Defamation League, saying, “We expect the anti-Semites to have a field day. They will exploit it.”
The New York Times noted that Madoff “moved easily in the clubby Jewish world that iterates between New York City and its suburbs and southern satellites like Palm Beach,” and quoted a hedge fund executive saying, “There was a joke around that Bernie was actually the Jewish T-bill,” referring to the ultrasecure investment of Treasury bills. “He was that safe.”
And the Manhattan Web site, Gawker, headlines, “Bernie Madoff, Very Bad for the Jews,” noting, in a piece dripping with wry irony, “Madoff made millions earmarked for charities disappear. Stealing from children, and education, and the arts! Wiping out the wealth of entire Jewish dynasties!
“Why, oh, why couldn’t the Jews be more stereotypical, ‘hoarding’ their wealth in gold coins in secret compartments in their homes, slipping in to embrace it every night and cackle evilly about how they were soaking the foolish Gentiles for everything they have? Turns out that the greatest thief of Jewish wealth since the Nazis is the hedge fund crook Madoff.”
As one Gawker reader responded, “Jew on Jew crime. Not funny.”
No, but a pretty funny line. Because, what we have here, finally, besides a sly wink at the ethnic stereotype, is an attempt to defuse it by mocking it.
And it’s about time.
When Wall Street falls apart, do we see headlines noting, “Protestant Treasury Secretary Paulson.” When George W. Bush screws up a war or two, do the headlines ask, “Will all WASPs be blamed for Bush’s blunders?”
Madoff’s a bad guy in any religion — but his religion has nothing to do with his scheming. It has to do with Madoff being a man without a conscience. And that’s a matter between him and the criminal courts – not between him and whatever version of God he might have.
