Let’s say it’s the day the Earth stands still, or UFOs have landed all over the place and disgorged mean-spirited aliens. You are alone in a strange city, devastation is everywhere, and all you have in your possession is a local telephone book. You try 911, but there’s no answer. What’s your next move?
Here is my hunch: Your next move is to look up someone with the same last name as yours, and if you don’t find any such listing, to look under Cohen or Levin or Rosenberg — which is to say, as “West Side Story” so bluntly puts it, “one of your own kind.”
It doesn’t have to be so dramatic a setting. You are lost in an unfamiliar area, you must ring someone’s buzzer in a large apartment building to ask for help, or perhaps knock on the door of a house. Will you feel a tad more relaxed if there’s a mezuzah on the door post of the house, if among the names on the array of buzzers there’s a Finkelstein?
Whatever else Jews are to each other, we are, at some level and in some sense, family, each other’s safe houses. Or so it has seemed.
Enter Bernard Madoff (and his abettors). No matter how widespread the devastation he has wrought, his early marks were Jews: Jewish people, Jewish institutions, Jewish philanthropies, Jewish celebrities. This isn’t a case of a teen stealing a pack of chewing gum from the faceless supermarket or a book from Barnes & Noble, rationalizing that they’d never miss his paltry theft; this was grand thievery, from people Madoff knew for sure would be ruined when his Ponzi scheme came undone, as it was one day bound to. Let none say this man was a philanthropist; his love of others (which is what “philanthropy” means) was at best a cover story, now uncovered. No, in fact he is a misanthrope. And his misanthropy raises the irksome question of how safe our safe houses are, how reliable the handshake is, how open the circle of solidarity can dare to be.
There’s a story I sometimes tell, the story of what happened when we returned from the cemetery after burying my father-in-law. We did a quick count and realized there were only nine males in the room, this at a time when and in a home where the idea of counting women was simply not available. Without hesitation, I went across the street to the candy store, which had a Jewish name — Meyer’s Candy & Sundries or some such — and told the owner, whom I did not know, that we were sitting shiva across the street and needed a 10th for the minyan. With no hesitation at all, he replied, “Give me a minute to lock up and I’ll be right with you.”
Suppose the store had been Madoff & Sons. Would I have asked Mr. Madoff? If I had, and he’d come, would I not have wondered whether he could actually be counted as part of the required community? Or would I, not knowing of his perfidy, have invited him and only later learned that in my innocence I’d caused our Kaddish to be befouled? But the whole point of safe houses is that you don’t have to check references, or at least shouldn’t have to, before using them.
It’s possible, I admit, that this whole notion of safe houses and Jewish names and even Jewish solidarity is a vestige of times now nearly gone. “Is it good for the Jews?” may be a snicker-causing formulation to Gen X-ers and entirely incomprehensible to Gen Y-ers. When they read of Madoff, they react with secular disgust but not with embarrassment nor a twinge of fear that the entire sorry saga is fodder for the antisemites. Not for them the constant, instinctive awareness of who in the room is Jewish, the tickled consciousness when, after being introduced to Murphy and Madison and Benson and Drysdale, you’re shaking hands with Shapiro.
So: There were more Jews on the 1938 Detroit Tigers, when Hank Greenberg was the only Jew on the team, than there are in Barack Obama’s Cabinet.
Is that good news or bad news? It used to be said of Bill Clinton that he was the first president who didn’t count Jews, meaning that he felt no need not to appoint “too many” Jews — Summers, Rubin, Reich, Kantor, Glickman, Albright. My sense is that it’s safe to say Obama is comfortable enough in his relationship with Jews not to fear appointing “too few” to his Cabinet. There are those who will be disconcerted by the Cabinet’s Jew-lessness. They should take comfort from the composition of the White House staff, arguably the more consequential of the two: Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council; David Axelrod, senior adviser to the president.
And there are those who will say that to be disconcerted — that is, to count Jews, to be aware of who and how many — is preposterous, ultimately an invitation to an us/them consciousness that is inherently divisive.
The fact is that we’re not required to choose between “it’s all in the family” and “there is no family.” It’s okay to feel a measure of relief that Blagojevich is not Jewish and a measure of embarrassment that Madoff is. A measure. It’s okay to care that there always be a Jew on the Supreme Court, as long as you care much more for the judicial philosophy of the nominee. It’s okay to have the concept of safe houses; it’s better, much better, never to need them.
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
When Hank Greenberg Met Jackie Robinson
Reconsider Decision on Rabbis and Intermarriage
Ultra-Orthodox Men Ditch All-Black Attire as Fashion Trumps Tradition
Israel's Shas, Right-Wing Kingmaker Party, Takes Sharp Turn to Left
Is Steven Hawking’s Decision To Boycott an Israeli Conference Boon to BDS?
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
You've successfully signed up!
Let's cut through the histrionic overreach and acknowledge that even on days when the earth hasn't stopped and mean-spirited aliens don't walk the street the Levins instinctively seek out the Cohens and the Rosenburgs. In the salad days they share the bounty with one another. It took a Jewish sociopath to reveal that the cabal is alive and well. This was an inadvertent public service, an early Christmas gift for those with the eyes to see.
Would you have counted any Israelis as part of your minyan who would vote for Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, or Shas (probably greater than 50% of Israels population)? After all, they dont share your vision that the Middle East conflict would be solved if Israel returned to the 1949 borders and allowed the right of return. Surely they arent really Jewish
I recall an article in FORWARD that BRAGGED that the Jews in Congress served "Jewish Interests" by earmarking $750 millions for these interests into the Banks Bailout Bill. That same kind of dopey ethnicism appears in the following quote from Mr. Fein: "The fact is that we’re not required to choose between “it’s all in the family” and “there is no family.” It’s okay to feel a measure of relief that Blagojevich is not Jewish and a measure of embarrassment that Madoff is. A measure. It’s okay to care that there always be a Jew on the Supreme Court, as long as you care much more for the judicial philosophy of the nominee. It’s okay to have the concept of safe houses; it’s better, much better, never to need them." That and his "Jew count" in the Obama Cabinet remind me of the commentary in the JERUSALEM POST claiming that Leiberman's 2004 defeat in the Democratic Presidential Primaries was so bad that it proves that America is still anti-Semitic. You can't have it both ways and then hide the contradiction behind screames of "anti-Semite" against those who see that your logic has no clothes on. Blagojevich and Madoff are in the same category: "meists" who thought their wants mean more than their trust. Does it really matter if one is son of a Serb and the other of a Jew? Those who hate you for exactly this kind of "us" vs. "other" read the FORWARD just as you do. And they will not ocwer when you call them "dumb goyim" in kosher company and "anti-Semites" in public. Stick to the Jewish standards, Mr. Fein and you'll be more likely to have ten real mensch at your funeral.
It makes no sense to beat yourself up over one person. As to the assumption that other Jews are more sensitive, more intelligent, more honest, etc., well, good luck with that...
In a sense, I share in the "shadenfreude." Those haughty fools had it coming to them. As an ardent Zionist, and child of holocaust survivors, who gave up business and all to go live in Israel, only to be defrauded of most of my money there myself, I can only say that there is only one solution to the "Jewish problem," and that is "Ahavat Yisrael." Until Jews can love themselves and their fellow Jews in an authentic way - unlike the brothers who sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites - we will never be a worthy and proud people able to hold our heads up high regardless of all of our supposedly "noble" accomplishments. Hatred is easy, but Love requires nurturing.
Mr. Kaine- When my father died three years ago friends and neighbours showed up to help make a minyan. They included folks who would have, had they lived in Israel, voted for the Likud, Shas, Mafdal, Meretz, Labour, and even Baruch Merzel. They included members of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reconstructionist congregations, chaps who were long time supporters of the Chicago chapter of Peace Now and those who lined their homes with Orange ribbons in solidarity with the settlers in Gush Katif. All of them were welcome, without their help we wouldn't have had a minyan over the seven days of shiva, and yes even you Mr. Kaine would be counted if the situation, chas v'shalom, presented itself again. All the best.
You know, if Jewish people would stop calling non-Jewish people "dumb goyim" anywhere, it would do a lot to stop antisemitism everywhere. I know that goyim who say "greedy jew" or "thieving jew" are absolute bigots. Therefore, I know that Jews who refer to goyim as "dumb goyim" are also racists and bigots.
There are absolutely no representatives or senators in Congress who are Jews looking out for "Jewish interests". DE Teodoru, making his absurd claims, is describing a a figment of his own imagination. The Jews elected to Congress, without exception, see themselves as American politicians who have an American agenda. In pre-Holocaust Poland, there were Jewish politicians; i.e. politicians elected to the Sejm who saw themselves as representatives of the Jewish national minority in Poland and its particular agenda. This is not the case in the USA. No politician of Jewish descent see himself as representing American Jewry. The second paragraph of DE Teodoru's comments is in the poorest of taste. I've never heard in a normal debate among polite and thinking people that one could speak of someone else's funeral. I think that the Forward should remove his comments.
Gentlemen, It is a sad thing indeed that Mr Madoff should have behaved so disgracefully, thus sparking waves of anti Semitism. Still, no community is safe from corruption. Mammon worshippers ought to be set aside from the community: they have defiled every holy thing.Isaiah 35:8.
Suddenly, it's not the hate for Madoff by the Jews he victimized in a JEWS-ONLY scam but it's the anti-Semitism this will provoke....Are we dealing here with an ethnocentric psychosis? Or is everyone faling for Foxman's Ponzi scheme: take hate for Madoff and give it to the "dumb goyim" so you can be scared to give your money to Foxman so he can express your hate. I guess this is what's called throwing good gelt after bad gelt!
I have read with incredulity the comments on Fein's article. Those who smirk at the concern expressed in the phrase "is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews" have no idea of the history behind that concern. It resulted from two millenia of persecutions and pogroms that Jews suffered. And to suppose or suggest that the phrase has no current relevance is either a head-in-the-sand attitude by Jews who have forgetten that history; or rank antisemitism on the part of others. The Madoff affair is fodder for both especially the latter.
The real tragedy may lie in the circularity of the dynamics. Like a Nietzschean eternal return, the Jews bear a contempt for the dumb goyim born of persecution (and I might say a certain theological basis). The latter respond to the unambiguous cohesiveness of 'the Jews' with campaigns of persecution. The very fact that 'the Jews' remains a coherent article in 2009 is a telling clue. Even the Jew network seems of almost supernatural construction: from Spielberg to Weisel to Jacobs. How else, but in their identity as Jews, did these people from widely disparate walks of life come to 'find Bernie'? The goyim's paranoia is affirmed. The historic dynamics are unshakable. We are back where we started. We never left.
Many believe, like Dr Fessel (if I understand his position correctly), that antisemitism can be caused or provoked by the actions of Jews. In my opinion, such fears are the impact of antisemitism on Jewish sociology. There are many Jews, sadly, who have accepted the basic idea that "there is something wrong about us". It's as if there is some normalcy in the hatred of Jews - a result of misdeeds of some that "understandably" cause others to attack the Jews. It's all nonsense. Antisemites have accused Jews of being communists and being capitalists at one and the same time. The Arab press can claim that the Holocaust is "Zionist propaganda" while, in the same breath, praising the "final solution". Antisemitism is simply an historic phenomenon, the roots of which are in the sociology of the antisemites. The Jews are a normal people, behaving just like other peoples. There is no need to cringe. Those who hate the Jews collectively (and wait for any excuse to express their hatred) are the aberration of civilization.
Madoff, like it or not is the poster boy for perfidy. For those who see in the Jew the personification of all that is of darkness in the human saga Madoff has filled the bill. Jews will moan and groan without ceasing about what this man's ambitions and greed have done to the reputation of the Jewish community among "the nations" and with good reason. What I'm waiting for is a response that goes beyond the economic and social consequences for Jews. Evil has been done.
This editorial sums up the dilemma of Jewish identity--of the past one or two decades if not of centuries.
The fact is that anti-semites don't need a Madoff to stir up hatred against Jews. If he never existed they would still find another excuse. The mistake is in confusing decent, ordinary folk with the rabid anti-semites. I think Jews need to stop being so ethno-sensitive, especially you media types. We don't have to prove anything to anybody. We have our bad guys and our good guys. Relax.
Dear Sephardiman Im sure most Israelis would have counted as a minyan for your late father. Im not so sure the same Jews would have counted for a minyan for Lennard Fein.
http://www.noontidepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=86 The Riddle of the Jew's Success [0722] $34.95 F. Roderich-Stoltheim (Theodor Fritsch) This rare and valuable book provides a detailed analysis of Jewish behavior and thinking. This is a reprint of the English-language edition of 1927, translated from German by Capel Pownall. After Germany's defeat in 1945, this book was banned by the Allied occupation authorities, and nearly all copies were destroyed. Written by the influential German publicist Theodor Fritsch, it appeared under a pen name. Fritsch was best known for his "Handbook On the Jewish Question," which went through 33 editions between 1887 and 1933, and had a tremendous influence in the decades before Hitler came to power. The Riddle the Jew's Success helps in understanding the scope and intensity of anti-Jewish feeling in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. From the Preface: "If there are riddles in the history of the nations, then the Jews most certainly present one of the chief instances; and, whoever has occupied himself with the problems of humanity, without advancing so far as the great problem of the Jews, has, so far as knowledge and experience of life are concerned, merely skimmed the surface of the subject. There is scarcely a field, from Art and Literature to Religion and Political Economy, from Politics to the most secret domains of sensuality and criminality, in which the influence of the Jewish spirit and of the Jewish entity cannot be clearly traced, and has not imparted a peculiar warp or trend to the affairs in question." Contents: Preface; Jewish Methods in the Economic Life; Particular Business Tactics of the Jew; The International Connection and Secret League of the Hebrews; The Peculiar Morality of Jewdom; An Explanation with Sombart; Jewish Successes in Modern Times; The Stock-Exchange; How Sound Business Methods are Forced Out of the Field by the Jews; Jewish Trade Specialities; Moral Principles in Trade; The Hebrews as Supporters of Capitalism; Business and Religion; The Race Problem; Origin of the Jewish Entity; The Influence of the Jew upon Womankind; The Jews and the World-War; Concluding Words; Errata. Softcover, 288 pages Stock Number: 0722 http://www.noontidepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=86
Subject: New White House Staff Only problem with this is if things go wrong we'll get blamed. Introducing the new White House Staff. So far we have: Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff - Jewish t David Axelrod - Senior Advisor to the President - Jewish Ronald Klain - Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States- Jewish Larry Summers - Economic Advisor to the President - Jewish Paul Volcker - Economic Advisor to the President, Former Head of Fed Reserve - Jewish Tim Geithner - Treasury Secretary - Jewish Peter Orszag - Head of Budget - Jewish Am I the only one noticing that Obama and Biden are not so much assembling staff, as gathering a minyan?
WOW!!!! Do you all realize what you've done here. You engaged in MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE about the Jew in the Diaspora....No hate, NO fear, NO slander. There is so much to learn abouth the Jews living in a non-Jewish world....Something that Jews have generously passing on through their exaulted positions in academia to our kids....But that's only SOME of our kids. The other half prefer the Jesus Sermon on the Mount and the Moses leading God's Chosen People stories so that they don't have to think, take responsibility or feel afraid of the future. It is these people that Rove sought to mobilize with promises of cash and power. Look where he got. Now that Obama is Preisdent there's a chance for REAL integration "IN MANY ONE"-- No American Jew I know wants to be left out of that oneness because THIS AMERICA is his homeland!
I have heard it said through Jewish religious studies that it is appropriate for Jews to rob from gentiles but not another Jew. Why is this?