March 30, 2009 | 3:10 pm

Wiesel and Foundation Receive Generous Support

Posted by Tom Tugend

Elie Wiesel

After Elie Wiesel lost more than $7 million of his personal fortune in the Bernard Madoff scandal, and his foundation took a $15.2 million hit, the Nobel Prize winner roundly cursed the Ponzi scheme artist, but he has now discovered a redeeming aspect to the financial blow.

Wiesel first disclosed the extent of his loss on Feb. 26 at a Conde Nast Portfolio panel discussion, but the business magazine’s web site has now weighed in with a follow-up.

During the last months, small and large donations, totaling $400,000, have flowed into The Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Some of the money was given directly to Wiesel and his wife Marion, but the couple turned everything over to the foundation.

“At any moment it would have been an amazing outpouring of generosity,” Marion Wiesel told Portfolio.com, “but specifically in these times it’s so amazing, and it continues.”

Among the donors are two alumni of Boston University, where Wiesel has taught for more than 30 years, who launched an e-mail campaign to encourage one million people to each donate $6, in remembrance of the six million Holocaust victims.

Donations to the Wiesel Foundation, which supports after-school centers in Israel, international conferences and various humanitarian awards and prizes, have ranged from $5 to $100,000.

Many small contributions came from “people we don’t know, in places we’ve never been to,” Marion Wiesel said.

At the earlier panel discussion, Wiesel said of Madoff, “We gave him everything; we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands.”

Wiesel added at the time that he could never forgive Madoff, who is now in jail awaiting sentencing. “I would like him to be in a solitary cell with a screen, and on that screen, for at least five years of his life, every day and every night there should be pictures of his victims,” Wiesel said.

March 14, 2009 | 10:28 pm

Is Jim Cramer Jewish?

Posted by Rob Eshman

Google the question, “Is Jim Cramer Jewish?”  Go ahead—about 500,000 web surfers already have.  For a long time, the first result to pop up was a forum entry at stormfront.something-or-other, the Internet’s safe harbour for Frustrated White Males.  The entry offers only this question, “Does anyone know if Jim Cramer is Jewish?”

Let’s resolve the deep mystery about whether a brash, media-savvy Harvard-educated financial expert with an East Coast accent and a last name derived from the German word for “peddler” is—SHOCKING!—Jewish.  Um, yes, he is.

But here’s the white Aryan dilemma—so is Jon Stewart.  It wasn’t stormfront.hate or the Klan who outed Cramer, it was The Daily Show host who took Cramer to the ethical woodshed. And Stewart is not, in fact, a descendant of the House of Stuart or the younger brother of Martha.  He was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz.

So there you have it: Jews can be immoral (we’re talking about you, Mr. Shenanigans) and Jews can be moral crusaders.  Jews can be ideological warmongers (Did someone say Doug Feith?  Never mind, I thought I heard something.) and Jews can be at the forefront of fighting against wrongheaded wars (Robert Greenwald,  Sen. Russ Feingold). Jews can be dangerous demagogues fomenting hatred (Avigdor Lieberman) and Jews can be heroic peacemakers (Yitzhak Rabin).

I apologize if that short circuits any FRM’s black-and-white thought process, but it is the complicated truth about Jews, about Christians, about Muslims, about any group, race, religion or nationality. Cramer and Stewart, as I quickly and not too elegantly wrote in an earlier post, actually represent twin poles of Jewish thinking. To see them in conflict Thursday night was actually NOT, as the Stormfront denizens likely see it, yet another sign of Jewish chicanery.  It was a sign of Jewish complexity, with, you know, a few good jokes thrown in, too.

For more of our Cramer v. Stewart coverage, click here.

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March 13, 2009 | 10:10 pm

Cramer v. Stewart…Jew v. Jew

Posted by Rob Eshman

Cramer v. Stewart; Jew v. Jew

Last night’s encounter between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer should be replayed, studied, discussed and memorized at every single yeshiva and Jewish day school.
Make the debate a mandatory part of the curriculum.  Why?  Because there are few more concise, dramatic and entertaining ways to engage in one of the central ongoing questions Judaism asks:  How do you balance the need for money with the curse of money?
In many ways these two men are mirror images of each other: both are from modest, middle class Jewish upbringings.  Both are from the northeast (Stewart from New York and New Jersey, Cramer from Pennsylvannia).  Both went to good east coast schools (Stewart attended William and Mary and Cramer graduated from some place called Harvard).  They are scrappy outsiders: combative, quick-witted, engaging (okay, I can’t say Cramer is my idea of fun, but he has his fans).  These two middle -aged, affluent white Jewish males are similar on so many counts, from their outsized ambitions to their modest heights.
And yet, and yet… in their souls, in their values, they represent the twin poles of Jewish existence, almost to the point of caricature.
Think of Cramer as representing the need for wealth and the security it brings.  In Jewish history, this was embodied in the stories not just of our patriarchs like Abraham, who may have started poor but ended up as pretty well-off, but of the kings, who pursued wealth and palaces and women.  Judaism is not a religion of poverty and self-abnegation.  It accords no special place to the meek and the poor.  In fact, the ancient rabbis made laws to protect the rights of the rich, who may be unjustly treated by courts sympathizing with the impoverished.  And yet…
Confronting the tradition of our patriarchs and kings are our prophets.  They railed against the unbridaled power and wealth of the kings.  They decried the role of money and empty ritual in Jewish life.  They exhorted Jews to return to the non-materialistic, eternal values— justice, mercy, faith, charity.  And they were pursued and persecuted, always in conflict with the kings.
What the world saw Thursday night was the king versus the prophet, the marketplace versus the temple, greed versus grace, the things of this world versus the eternal values of the world-to-come. It is a tension at the heart of Jewish life, and the tension and temptation within all our hearts.
When Bernie Madoff and his wife gave millions of stolen money to support the Gift of Life bone marrow transplant registry, it’s possible they were trying to reconcile their inner Cramer with their inner Stewarts.  Even crooks can have a conscience, and I suspect Jewish goniffs have particularly twisted ones.  Which, by the way, may explain why Jim Cramer looked so uncomfortable last night….

Ask Jim Cramer

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March 13, 2009 | 5:12 pm

Afraid of jail, Madoff wants bail (again)

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Breaking news from Reuters:

Lawyers for confessed swindler Bernard Madoff on Friday appealed the decision by a U.S. Judge to revoke his bail when he pleaded guilty to running the biggest fraud in Wall Street history, a court official said.

No details were immediately available of the filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, one day after Madoff, 70, admitted to running a worldwide fraud involving as much as $65 billion over many years.

At Thursday’s plea proceeding, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin revoked Madoff’s $10 million bail, removing him from house arrest in his luxury Manhattan apartment and sending him to jail pending sentencing on June 16.

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March 13, 2009 | 4:47 pm

A Swindlers [Reading] List: The Three Best Stories on Madoff

Posted by Rob Eshman

Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Everything you need to know about the Bernie Madoff scandal in three great stories.

The Monster Mensch from NewYork Magazine

Madoff’s World from Vanity Fair

What Happened in the Courtroom: The Transcript

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March 12, 2009 | 2:09 pm

Forgive Bernie Madoff? Please

Posted by Rob Eshman

KNX-AM Radio showed up at my home at 5:41 am to interview me about Bernie Madoff.  Yes, they had given me a warning phone call, and even promised I only had to stumble out in my pajamas.  I put on pants.

At the end of the interview, the incredibly awake reporter thrust a mike closer to my face—in the morning darkness, dogs barking, street deserted—and asked if I had anything else to add.  My mind drew a perfect, decaffeinated blank.  Now, three cups of yerba mate later, the answer arrives:

I have two things to add. One, people need to understand that this man Madoff, as heinous as he is, didn’t cause the economic meltdown.  His scheme simply fell apart because the economy collapsed.  It’s unfair and unwise to make this crook the poster boy for a recession or depression that so many people—from our political leaders to our regulators to our speculators and over-borrowers—had a hand in.

Second, his sentencing must in no way deter prosecutors from finding out who else among his family and friends was involved, and making certain they pay for their crimes as well.

Finally, no, I do not forgive Bernie Madoff.  I know that will be the inevitable question now that he expressed remorse to a judge in Federal court. He’s welcome to ask God for forgiveness, but good luck with that, too.

For the complete Bernie Madoff update, read this excellent New York Times summary of the morning’s breaking news.

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March 12, 2009 | 2:00 pm

Fill Out A Madoff Survey

Posted by Rob Eshman

Hinda Mandell, a doctoral student in media studies at Syracuse University, is researching news coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal and reaction (both Jewish and non-Jewish) to the scandal. Tell her what you think of how the news is covering the Madoff scandal, as well as your thoughts on what is regarded as the largest Ponzi scheme in history, by participating in a completely anonymous online survey. The survey, which is right here,  takes 5-7 minutes to complete. Feel free to FORWARD it to friends, colleagues and family members - both Jewish and non-Jewish. For additional information, or to receive a copy of the survey results, contact Hinda Mandell at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). And thanks for your help!

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March 12, 2009 | 1:45 pm

Why the truth may go to jail with Bernie Madoff

Posted by Dean Rotbart

Wall Street loves leverage.  But by pleading guilty today to 11 criminal charges, Bernard L. Madoff eliminates the main leverage that federal investigators might have used to get him to cooperate with their ongoing investigation, especially concerning who else may have been involved in the massive Ponzi scheme.

Madoff’s guilty plea means he will face no criminal trial, and he has little to fear from civil trials, since the Feds will seize all his assets anyway.  He will not have to be a cooperating witness.  He will not have to say a word about where he may have hidden funds.  He won’t have to implicate his brother, wife, sons or anyone else—if they were part of the scheme.  So far, none of his family members has been charged in connection with the fraud.

Keep in mind, as Madoff himself told the judge today, “...as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come.”  Translation?  Madoff had plenty of time to craft a strategy for what he would do when he was exposed.  Today we are seeing his strategy play out.

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