December 19, 2008

The U.S. government didn’t invest directly in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. But it could take the biggest hit of all. From the AP:

Even Uncle Sam may get burned by Bernard Madoff. Investors who lost their fortunes in Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme will end up paying far less in taxes and may even be eligible for refunds, according to accounting experts. By some estimates, the Internal Revenue Service could be out as much as $17 billion in lost tax revenue.

“This is one more thing federal, state and local officials will have to deal with,” said John Berrie, a tax partner at the law firm Bryan Cave in New York City. “It’s another heavy box on their back.”

Since losing $18 million in cash investments—worth $25.5 million on paper at the end of October—the Jewish Community Foundation has emphasized that it is “aggressively pursuing every possible recovery and remedy.” Tomorrow it will make that effort more official when it announces the creation of a special committee charged by the board with recovering the money the foundation invested with Bernard Madoff on behalf of the participants in its common-investment pool. Members of the committee will include foundation Chair Cathy Siegel Weiss and Chair-elect Lorin Fife, as well as a yet-unidentified senior member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

“Even as we remain shocked and appalled by the alleged fraud perpetrated not only on us but hundreds of other victims, The Foundation is moving swiftly and decisively to undertake the level of self-examination and review that is expected of us as stewards of Jewish Los Angeles’ charitable assets for 54 years.  We take our role in the community very seriously,” Marvin Schotland, president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Schotland stressed again that losses were limited to the common-investment pool and didn’t affect the donor-advised funds: “We remain highly stable—a hallmark of this foundation.”

Good luck to the special committee. From what I’ve read and heard, it’s going to be a rough road.

Danielle Berrin mentioned at Swindler’s List a discussion Jeffrey Goldberg had with L.A. Super Rabbi David Wolpe. The topic of their conversation was Bernard Madoff. And like Rabbi Elliot Dorff and others too, Wolpe takes on look at the Jewish response to Madoff. For one, Goldberg wants to know if he should be excommunicated for allegedly bilking Jewish charities of hundreds of millions of dollars:

David Wolpe: We do not practice formal excommunication.  I would not prevent him from entering a synagogue to pray.  We are in the atonement business.  However, he should be barred from any honor or recognition.  To the extent permitted by his sentence he should do something of service to the community to make small reparations for the incalculable harm he caused.  Short of formal excommunication, however, informal ‘shunning’ has a nice, solid ring to it.

JG: “Shunning,” huh?  Does that imply that you believe his crimes might be irredeemable?  At what point do you give up on a sinner?

DW: Maimonides lists sins—following the laws of the Mishna—that cannot be fully forgiven.  Common to most is an inability to make restitution (another example is one who coldly assumes “I’ll sin, be forgiven, sin, be forgiven” etc.).  Madoff cannot conceivably make restitution to the unnumbered he has hurt—from lost personal savings to people dependent on the bone marrow registry whose holdings he squandered.  Perhaps someone of purer soul might be persuaded to find redemption possible for him.  I confess I cannot.

JG: Do Jews wring their hands too much?  I didn’t notice a great deal of Christian angst over Ken Lay.

DW: I wonder if the people in Ken Lay’s church wrung their hands.  Since Judaism is not a religion, but more like a religious family, bound by strong communal ties, Jews are more likely than Christians to feel pride or shame in the actions of other Jews.  You don’t get strong bonds without a degree of identification.  That is why the foolishness in other people’s families doesn’t embarrass us.

JG: Should we be embarrassed because we’re supposed to be so smart (especially with, you know, money) and yet we got fleeced by Bernie Barnum, or should we be embarrassed because there are evildoers among us?  And what does this mean for tribal trust?

DW: We should be grateful that trust still exists.  Cunning is an unlovely stereotype; I can’t read a balance sheet to save my soul (perhaps not the best metaphor in this instance) and I am hardly alone.  It may hurt that trust, which is sad; for years the fact that the diamond business all over the world, among Jews and non-Jews, is conducted with a handshake because Jews set it up that way is a tribute to decency and probity.  One man’s venality and cruelty can’t set the standard.

Vast amounts of money call not only for trust but for a solid sense of genuine value in this world.  Rabbi Akiba says in the Talmud that the central commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).  May I propose that these days, “Guard your soul carefully” (Deut. 4:9) deserves pride of place.

How romantic.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is recorded as saying: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” How then can a majority of American Christians believe that non-Christians go to heaven?

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, following up on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, found that 52 percent of American Christians think another faith can lead to eternal life. Here’s a snippet from the press release:

American adults express a variety of views on how people can achieve eternal life. When asked to describe in their own words what determines whether a person will attain eternal life, nearly three-in-ten (29%) say that a person’s actions are most important. A similar number (30%) says that belief is the key factor in achieving everlasting life. One-in-ten refer to a combination of belief and actions as necessary for eternal life, and almost as many (8%) cite some other factor as most important. In addition, more than one-in-ten (14%) indicate they are unsure of what leads to eternal life, and another 7% volunteer they do not believe in eternal life.

White evangelical Protestants stand out as the group most likely to name belief as the most important factor in obtaining eternal life, with 64% expressing this view. Nearly half of evangelicals (45%) are explicit in stating that belief in Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation, while another 19% are somewhat more generic in their responses, citing belief in God or, more simply, “belief” or “faith” as most important. An additional 10% of evangelicals say that a combination of belief and actions are crucial for salvation, meaning that, in total, nearly three-quarters of this group (74%) identify an element of belief as necessary for salvation.

Among evangelicals, 64 percent say Jews can go to heaven without believing in Jesus. Reminds me of a comment an acquaintance made at a party last week when he learned I had Christianity to go with my curly hair: “Well, somebody’s got to let you in.”

I really shouldn’t direct readers to the new blog from Martini “Kike” Leaf. But his most recent post is just too much It’s called the Bernie Madoff Blog, but really it’s just a forum for ranting against me and The Jewish Journal. A sampling:

Jew Haters are having a field day with the Madoff allegations. One Jew hating poster from a Jew Hating Web Site had the following to say:

In doing all this, Madoff soiled the very word, “Jew.”

“The greatest American Jewish crime since the Rosenbergs,” …. An exaggeration? The Rosenbergs were traitors to the nation’s defense, Madoff to our financial system. But Madoff, with his posturing involvement in Yeshiva University, makes the Jewish claim to ethical standards look like a bad joke. The saving grace is that, … at least many of his victims are Jews.

For readers inclined to come to the defense of the supposedly soiled Jewish people,I have to reveal that I lied. The above quote was taken from an editorial in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, not from a Jew Hating site per se. The Jewish Journal touts itself as the largest American Jewish publication outside of New York City. If that quote wasn’t bad enough, it is even worse that the above quote was from Mr. Rob Eshman, an editorial writer for the Jewish Journal.

I know. I was laughing out loud too.

Leaf, a real mensch, goes on to attack me again and say Rob is “delusional, presumptuous, and foolish for proclaiming anything about the word ‘Jew’” and attacks the Journal and other “Jewish” publications for suggesting that Madoff’s alleged crime says something negative about Jewish values. Oddly, I haven’t read anywhere but in the comments section here and on the white-wing blogs any denigration of Judaism and observance of the law. What I have seen is constructive introspection:

“The Jewish community better get serious about the cancer that’s growing inside it. The devastation on Wall Street carries a lot of Jewish names, from firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to individuals such as Bernard Madoff, whose $50 billion Ponzi scheme collapsed last week, and lawyer Marc Dreier, arrested Dec. 7 for defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach writes.

“On the Internet, more and more people who don’t like us are beginning to connect the dots, pointing out that there are an awful lot of Jews who bear responsibility for Wall Street’s fall. But that’s not what bothers me. Anti-Semites will always find something to hate us for, and I’m way too busy to worry about what a bunch of bigots think anyway.

“Rather, what worries me is this: What if some of it is true? What if our community has become too obsessed with money? What if our values have become about wearing the most expensive Cartier watch and driving a souped-up Mercedes? What if a disproportionately large number of young Jews are running to work on Wall Street and never even considering jobs like teaching, the rabbinate or outreach because the compensation, comparatively, stinks?”

I’m not really sure what planet Leaf, who arrived here over the weekend, lives on. His comments wreak of not only Jewish supremacism but intra-Jewish exclusiveness He has said Madoff is getting lynch mobbed; has never heard of Rabbi David Wolpe and attaches air-quotes to religious title of Rabbi Elliot Dorff; and appears to think any argument can be won by citing statistics that suggest Jews have higher-than-average IQs. I don’t dispute that last point; I just don’t see how it’s relevant.

“The funny thing,” a friend said to me after reach Leaf’s comments, “is that his argument is almost exactly Hitler’s”

But I must tip my hat to Leaf. He outed me for the “Jew-hater” I really am. It took 20 months of covering the heart of LA Jewish life for somebody to realize I was not only a fraud but a cancer. Just reading the words I wrote, he knew, before even realizing I was Christian, that I was a Jew-hater. Bravo, Mr. Leaf.

Then again, Leaf seems to believe anyone with a Jewish perspective other than his wishes they had never been circumcised. Here he is berating a Jew he later refers to as Heil Heller:

“You are a self hating Jew. The gentiles can be Jew haters, that is all too common, but there is something even worse about a self hating Jew. You mean to say that the gentile auto execs are not as crooked as any other type of executives ? Or maybe the fact that Arafat stole billions from the Palestinians was just abberent non Jewish behavior? To say that Jews should be better than other people is in and of itself racist. Of course all religious people of any faith should be held to the higher standards religious people represent. Was the governor of Illinois Jewish, or the mayor of Detroit ? Get a Jewish backbone Mr. Heller and stop being so afraid of being Jewish.”

* Updated: That image is of our satirical Purim cover from this spring. Believe it or not, there are members in the community who refer to us as the “Jewish” Journal and the Not Jewish Journal. This is to be expected. Jews have sayings like “two Jews, three opinions” and “one Jew, two synagogues.” Inevitably, we can’t please everyone.

Most people remember Kenneth Starr from his days as the special investigator of Whitewater and President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. But for the last few years he has served as dean of the law school at Pepperdine University, which is affiliated with a conservative Christian denomination that I grew up in.

After rumors circulated last month, Starr was named today the lead counsel for the chief proponents of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment, passed last month by 52 percent of Californians, that would limit marriage to unions between a man and a woman. Legal challenges have been filed, and proponents are preparing for a battle.

“We are confident that the will of the voters and Proposition 8 will ultimately be upheld,” said Andrew Pugno, General Counsel for ProtectMarriage.com and the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund. “The addition of Dean Starr to this legal conversation will provide useful guidance for the Court in resolving these important issues.”

Starr, like me, grew up in the Church of Christ (not to be confused with the United Church of Christ, which resides on the other end of the theological spectrum). I’m curious as to how his faith shapes his practice of law. I couldn’t find much online. The best window I got into Starr’s Christian worldview comes from a comment he made during his speech at Christian Business Men’s Committee in Washington. It appeared in a 1998 Washington Times article, no longer online:

“When you think of the blessed life that Jesus led on earth, think of his time utilization,” Mr. Starr said. “He didn’t waste a lot of time. Three years, that’s the length of time . . . that this individual, human yet God, ended up shaping not just history, but each person who will say, ‘I want to come to know Christ.’ “