Blame it on the Jews! Shakespeare warned us about the Jewish moneylender Shylock in — The Merchant of Venice — who wanted a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his anti-semitic tormentors. The Jews run Hollywood! Hollywood is not Jewish enough! The Jews own the banks! The Jews own Bill Clinton! New York Jews are ruined by success! The Jews rule America! In today’s New York Times — published in Hymietown Central — there is an article eviscerating Bernie Maddoff’s Ponzi scheme of ripping off what comes across in print like a cabal of “money-hungry Jews.”
Here’s how the NYTimes connects Madoff to the world of Jewish money:
While many of the known victims of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities are prominent Jewish executives and organizations — Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Spitzers, Yeshiva University, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and charities set up by the publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman and the Hollywood director Steven Spielberg….
But in the clubby world of Jewish philanthropy in the New York area, his increasing wealth and growing reputation among market insiders added polish to his personal prestige….
The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, for instance, reported that it had lost $5.7 million on an investment with Mr. Madoff that was made at the donor’s behest….
He used his support of organizations like the Public Theater in Manhattan and the Special Olympics to build a network of trust that began to stretch wider and deeper into the Jewish community….
At Oak Ridge Country Club, in suburban Hopkins, Minn., known for a prosperous Jewish membership, many who belonged were introduced to the Madoff firm by one of his friends, Mike Engler….
The quiet message became familiar in similar pockets of Jewish wealth and trust: “I know Bernie. I can get you in.”….
Some of the most prominent Jewish figures in high finance and industry began to court Bernie Madoff — and, through them, he reached a new orbit of wealth….
He could not have had a more effective recruiter than Jacob Ezra Merkin, a lion of Wall Street who would be president of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue. Mr. Merkin’s father, Hermann, was the founding president of the synagogue and Herman Wouk, the author, wrote its constitution. As a direct descendant of the founder of modern Orthodox Judaism and a graduate of Columbia’s English department and Harvard’s law school, Mr. Merkin easily held his own in a congregation that included such luminaries as the author Elie Wiesel, the deal maker Ronald O. Perelman and Ira Rennert, a wealthy financier perhaps best known for building one of the biggest houses and compounds in the Hamptons.Mr. Merkin was fluent in Jewish and secular studies, as comfortable quoting Psalms as William James….
Behind these veils of paperwork and partnerships, Mr. Madoff’s reach now extended into the top tiers of Jewish finance and philanthropy, where he rubbed shoulders with corporate directors and prominent hedge fund managers. But there were wider worlds to conquer….
If the wealthy Jewish world he occupied was his launch pad, the wealthy promoters he cultivated at Fairfield Greenwich were his booster rocket….
What began as a quietly coveted investment opportunity for the lucky few in the Jewish country clubs on Long Island became, in its final burst of growth, a thoroughly global financial product….
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest of the world’s sovereign wealth funds, with assets estimated earlier this year to be approaching $700 billion, wound up in the same boat as Jewish charities in New York: caught in the collapse of Bernie Madoff….
Did Bernie Madoff purposefully go after the big money in the Jewish community — knowing full well the Torah and its mandate to invest and save and give back — and exploit the religiously mandated wants and needs of the Jewish community?
Or did Madoff merely offer opportunity and somehow the rich and powerful Jews just happened to find him?