Nearly 40 percent of American Jews were hit by Madoff

Let me clarify that headline. Bernard Madoff did not personally take from 40 percent of American Jews.

But a new poll from J Street, which I discovered from a Gawker post linking back to me, explored, among facets of the American Jewish community largely concerning politics and Israel, just how deeply it was affected by the Madoff investment fraud. The results, via Mondoweiss, are not surprising:

The poll shows that 39 percent of American Jews had some degree of Madoff connection. 2 percent say they were personally affected. 17 percent know someone who was affected. 28 percent say: an organization I support has been affected. I’m in that group; some leftleaning orgs were affected. (Why do the numbers add up to 47? Because there’s overlap of the three groups.)

Sadly, that sounds about right.