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December 16, 2008 | 10:32 am

What would the sages say about Madoff?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Rabbi Elliot Dorff

I’m looking forward to reading what editors and columnists for Jewish newspapers have to say this week about Bernard Madoff. I think I can posit a safe guess: something about a special place in hell ...

But yesterday, though, with a real Jewish authority. Rabbi Elliot Dorff is rector of American Jewish University and a modern-day sage. One of the authors of an opinion from the Conservative movement that blessed same-sex unions and also co-chaired Rabbis for Obama, Dorff also serves on the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, which lost $6.4 million in an investment with Madoff.

Dorff, who co-chairs the Federation’s committee on the vulnerable, said that though the needy don’t have enough money to invest with Madoff—I read the baseline was $10 million—they will suffer the most from his alleged house of cards.

What he found most troubling, though, was that for decades Madoff had lived and breathed Orthodox Judaism, and yet he apparently didn’t have a problem ripping other Jews off.

“As a religious Jew, how do you see it being OK to daven three times and day and then defraud the Jewish communities of many cities of their funds?“ Dorff asked. “If anything, this shows you can’t be a religious Jew simply by observing the laws. Being a religious Jew must entail being moral as well. Beside the fact that it both illegal and immoral to do this to individual investors—to do it to Jewish federations representing the Jewish community is just unconscionable. What happened to Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh BaZe—all Jews are responsible for each other?“

“Piety,“ he added, “is not an excuse, let alone a justification, for immorality.“

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This guy is unbelievable. I had not heard that madoff had pretensions to Orthodox Jewish life, but to use this as an opportunity to take potshots at Orthodoxy is not qualitatively different than antisemites using Madoff to take potshots at Jews and Judaism including Rabbi Dorff. Of course he is right that this shows you can’t be a religious Jew simply by observing the laws, any more than you can be a religious Jew marrying your own gender, any more than you can be a good Jew or Israeli by opposing classical Zionist ideology, even if you go to the trouble of ginning up some ‘laws’ to throw Jews off their land.

If I wanted to give Rabbi Dorff the benefit of the doubt I think that he means that observing the forms of rituals does not mean observing the forms of Jewish ethics and Jewish property and contract law, like all Conservative Jews do. But he didn’t say that, why not. so no benefit of the doubt.

But Conservative Judaism has no independent authority or that does not derive at whatever distance from Orthodoxy and this attempt at deniability and distancing will not work. Meanwhile, I feel sure I can judge the quality and quantity of Madoff’s prayers without this insight. If anything, Madoff cultivated Orthodox contacts for the same reason that Willie Sutton stole from banks; not because they have most of the money but because they give most of the money, and are the most trusting within their communities (not for long I feel). Madoff treated his Orthodox identity if any as team colors and not as a check on discipline.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/16/08 at 1:24 pm

“If I wanted to give Rabbi Dorff the benefit of the doubt I think that he means that observing the forms of rituals does not mean observing the forms of Jewish ethics and Jewish property and contract law.“

I would agree with that perspective.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 12/16/08 at 1:58 pm

I assume that the the phrase “klal yisroel areizim zeh bazeh” is your transcription error, Brad, since that is meaningless and it would be impossible for a rabbi to say it. The actually famous expression is “Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh BaZeh”; trust me that in Hebrew the difference is glaring.

In any case, the logic is weak, as the institutions themselves exemplify the principle, and the principle is not weakened by a lone dirtbag like Madoff.

For example, I just heard that results are in on California’s laws on cell-phone use while driving. Accidents are down very significantly, even taking into account that not everyone observes them, not everyone is caught etc. But it would be foolish to say that “this shows you can’t be a religious Jew better driver simply by observing the laws”, even if it is true. The more that observe the laws and the better they observe them, the better the collective result, and that’s all we can ask.

To be sure we could Reform the cell-phone law by changing it to require saluting the flag or conducting meditation workshops focusing upon our social responsibilities and do surveys to test the effectiveness of those. But that gets a little abstract.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/16/08 at 2:00 pm

Yes, I made the transcription error. I looked up Kol Yisrael, but, lacking a Jewish education, it didn’t make sense.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 12/16/08 at 2:06 pm

[NerdIcon]
“Klal Yisroel” means the ‘collective of Israel’, “Kol Yisroel” means ‘all of Israel’. Klal could work, but is not the original (talmudic) quote and slightly ungrammatical. It is the word areizim that does not exist, the word is ‘areivim’; hard to translate but involved with connection. The phrase ‘Zeh Bazeh’ makes it ‘are interconnected with each other’, the version ‘Zeh Lazeh’ makes it ‘are responsible for each other’
[/NerdIcon]

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/16/08 at 3:12 pm

i worked with a very powerful orthodox jew…he was extremely immoral and dangerous…he destroyed many people’s lives including my own…the other jews in the workplace reinforced each others bad behaviors…stop using “religion” to protect each other…this is tribalism…do it in some other country….

Comment by shawna murray md on 12/17/08 at 9:32 am

i worked with a very powerful gentile…he was extremely immoral and dangerous…he destroyed many people’s lives including my own…the other gentiles in the workplace reinforced each others bad behaviors…stop using “bigotry” to protect each other…this is tribalism…do it in some other country….

It’s really true!

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/17/08 at 2:35 pm

Yeah.  Let me guess the names—GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Runsfeld, Chuck Paulson!

Comment by The Web Guy on 12/17/08 at 3:21 pm

No, it was far more personal than that. Although after the trillion dollar ripoff you won’t catch me defending the administration (maybe Rumsfeld.) All the Somali pirates that ever lived, plus all the other pirates that ever lived put together never managed to steal a trillion dollars in.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we want to call your attention to our emergency evacuation procedures. Escape chutes will deploy off the clearly marked emergency exits located in the front and rear on each side of the aircraft. You should be prepared to use them as necessary. To your left, you will see that the wing engines are on fire. To your right and below is a rubber boat containing your captain and crew. Good luck - this has been a recording.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/17/08 at 4:10 pm

this post is bigoted.  it assumes that madoff was a religious jew, with an orthodox identity.  I doubt the author or dorf could identify an orthodox synagouge that madoff attended frequently.

Remember what we learn as kids, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.

Comment by sp on 12/18/08 at 9:16 pm

Of course it is bigoted.

A newer blog post confirms that Rabbi/Sage Dorff was just making an assumption about Made-off.

I’m glad this was discovered, as I was feeling just a tad guilty at assuming (correctly) that Rabbi Dorff was using this scandal just as an opportunity to flog his knee-jerk ‘talking points’ against the Orthodox. I felt sure that Madoff was not Orthodox anyway, but even if he is considered Orthodox in any sense it says something about his hypocrisy, not about Orthodoxy. To say that an amoral swindler is Orthodox is like saying that the ‘American Taliban’ (John Phillip Walker Lindh, captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan while serving in the Taliban army) was a baptized R.C. and went through a Buddhist period. What does this say about Catholicism? What is the Buddhist position on fighting against America? Dumb, right? But plenty of antisemites are sneering that Madoff’s crimes say something about Jews and that there is a positive Jewish position on committing fraud. I am sure that Rabbi Dorff would never agree with those positions and has good things to say about unity as a value, but I wouldn’t turn my back on him in an overcrowded lifeboat.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/18/08 at 10:47 pm

Dorff is correct when he says “This shows you can’t be a religious Jew simply by observing the laws. Being a religious Jew must entail being moral as well”
This applies equally to all other religions and beliefs.  I (not a Jew) have seen people of all faiths go to worship a couple of times a week and assume this meets their entire religious obligations.
The big difference with all other religions is this enormous complication of a Jewish race as well as a religion.  I know there was a rather ‘batty” old lady who handed out anti-Jewish literature near the British Parliament and who was always aquitted on Racial Hatred charges because she said being a Jew was not a race, one could opt in or out of the religion. True, but one cannot opt out of the Jewish DNA.  As a gentile, I fingd the biggest shock in this whole disaster the fact that he (allegedly) happily robbed Jewish charities.

Comment by david chown on 12/20/08 at 1:12 am

This brings up a good point. I concurred with you earlier when I said “Of course he is right that this shows you can’t be a religious Jew simply by observing the laws, any more than you can be a religious Jew ‘marrying’ your own gender” (the last issue that brought Rabbi Dorff to our attention). Now it is time to make finer distinction, because that was not strictly true.

The first line we generally draw in Jewish law is between those relating to God and those relating to people. When seeing the Torah as God’s will the distinction is just academic. Academic is not insignificant; it can be useful but it only changes the way we think about things, not what we actually do. Rabbi Dorff (like Jesus, not coincidentally) would be saying that observing the Human-God laws do not ensure the Human-Human laws and that is true. As an analogy, maintaining and inspecting cars does not ensure that safe driving. The laws are related but not interdependent.

But the flip side of trying to be moral without studying and observing the laws may produce nice people, but not religious Jews. The reason is that laws are relatively well-defined and objective, but free-floating morality is not. Othodoxy has no problem equating morality with observance of laws because it is impossible to observe them without producing a moral community and society. But if one belongs to a religious approach that knocks out the authoritative underpinnings of morality. Again, if people neglect their car maintenance and inspection than a lot more people are going to get hurt, even with good intentions and driving.

I don’t know of any evidence that Madoff was religiously observant in any way but even if he was he violated many Jewish religious laws, because finance is a religious issue like everything else in life. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arba’ah_Turim

If one observes both kinds of laws then it one is a good, religious, moral Jew (and human being). The practice and discipline is supposed to refine our personality and spirit, but if not it is still better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than the wrong thing for he ‘right’ reason.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/20/08 at 6:41 pm

‘Beside the fact that it both illegal and immoral to do this to individual investors—to do it to Jewish federations representing the Jewish community is just unconscionable’.
Why, if someone can explain this to me, is it a worse offense, i.e. unconscionable, to do this to the Jewish community? Is it not unconscionable to do this to individual investors?

Comment by Reinout de Waal on 12/20/08 at 11:31 pm

Of course it is unconscionable to do this to individual investors. This is not a choice between OK and bad, it is between terrible and worse.

The keyword you missed is ‘federations’ which could have been capitalized. These are not just financial co-ops but the trust funds for charitable non-profit organizations, containing the proceeds of fund drives and individual donors. These are not people OR organizations who placed money as investments. Investors at least accept that their money is at some degree of risk, although not from outright fraud. But the real damage is done to the countless recipients of the programs funded by those donations; individual recipients, programs, and the recipients of those programs.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 12/21/08 at 12:51 am

Hello Brad A. Greenberg, First of all thanks for sharing nice information here. I read your post and really very nice and good information you share on Rabbi Elliot Dorff. Nice explanation on this person activities. Really very nice and thanks for it.

Comment by quality inspection on 6/04/09 at 11:23 am

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