Self-segregation: Is it Good for the Jews?
JT | 12/15/2008
In light of the recent news of Bernard L. Madoff’s swindling of the Jewish non-profit world I can’t help but ponder the question, “Are Jews good for the Jews?”
The first thing my grandma asks me when I start dating someone is the ubiquitous question, “Are they Jewish?” Like somehow, being Jewish makes the person a better fit. Keeping it in the tribe is better and safer, we are told. Classical Rabbinic tradition states that baseless hatred (sinat chinam) was the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple. Jew-on-Jew hate destroyed our kingdom, not the invading Romans. I think that it is safe to say that Madoff expressed baseless hatred toward the unwitting NGOs who placed their faith and money in his hands. And not only are places like Yeshiva University and Hadassah now in trouble but the entire stock market took a dive today.
Blind faith in our own people can be a dangerous thing. Segregating ourselves can help foster community but it can also lead to alienation from the greater whole. Take for example, the recent release of Blackbird, a web browser built specifically for African-American users. Is this simply another niche market in the web 2.0 world or racist segregation? Check out the comments in the aforementioned Techcrunch post to see how heated this topic is!
How do these issues relate to the development of the Tagged Tanakh? Are we building something just for ourselves, dependent exclusively on the charity of Jews and participation of Jews? Or is this further proof that we need to have a more permeable sense of Judaism–not place all our eggs in one basket and mitigate our risk by placing some faith in those who do not come from the same ethnic, religious or political background as ourselves.
As one of the former guard dogs on Wall Street’s NASDAQ, Madoff forces us to ask, “Who Watches the Watchmen?
Is Bernie Madoff Good for the Jews?
A perennial question. Jews have always walked a tightrope between isolation and acculturation, even at times, between survival as a people and assimilation into the dominant culture among whom we live. It’s estimated that as many as 80% of the Jews who lived in the Roman Empire after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed disappeared forever into Roman culture, ceasing to exist as Jews. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
So when your Grandma asks you: “Is she Jewish?” she’s NOT implying “Like somehow, being Jewish makes the person a better fit,” and “keeping it in the tribe is better and safer,” but rather “Will I have Jewish great-children? Will JT’s children treasure and preserve Jewish tradition and learning as much as I have? Will the light of Torah increase or diminish in the next generation?”
Which brings me to Bernie Madoff. Some people are characterizing what Madoff did through his Ponzi scheme as “affinity fraud,” i.e., preying on one’s own “family” by taking advantage of their automatic trust in “one of their own.” Ironically, affinity fraud is the opposite of “baseless hatred (sinat hinam).” For what Madoff did was to leverage “ahavat yisrael,” Jews’ LOVE for one another as his secret weapon to rip off Jewish charities and philanthropists as well as individuals as greedy as himself. If his investors had exercised a little bit of “sinat hinam”—or at least, a measure of healthy skepticism—they might have been spared ruin and humiliation.
So back to JT’s question: Is self-segregation good or bad for the Jews? If it stems from fear of the Other, a sense of superiority over the Other, ethnic bias, ignorance, closemindedness, then it’s definitely bad for the Jews. Our tradition teaches us that we have been called upon to be “a light to the nations” (or la-goyim), but in our multi-cultural, post-modern world, we have come to realize that the “goyim,” that is, the other peoples of the world, have equally been called upon to be a light to the nations, bringing their own tribe’s wisdom and cultural legacy to the rest of us.
It is vital that SOME Jews survive AS JEWS so that our light keeps burning—and the odds of that happening increase when both parents fan that flame together. Many liberal Jews have reluctantly conceded that only the Orthodox will keep the light burning in future generations; they suspect that the rest of us will disappear into the Roman Empire. As a feminist Jew, a havurahnik, someone who believes in dialogue and dialectic with non-Jews, an American, a humanist, I don’t want to entrust the light solely to the Orthodox, although they are trustworthy guardians. I believe that Judaism is more than halakhah alone.
So to finish with Bernie Madoff. Yes, he is indeed “bad for the Jews.” But not because his crimes stemmed from his Jewishness, but because they happened IN SPITE of that fact and all that being Jewish demanded of him. As my Grandma would have said, “He’s a shande fer de goyim.” As a Jew, Madoff brings shame upon all of us.
Losing Track of the Basics
How could a board allow its funds to be invested in a fund run, as a business, by one of its own board members?
Has common sense along with the basics of institutional governance evaporated? I like in that article you linked to where it says something like, “people thought hedge fund managers were really smart so they trusted them with their money.”
Well smart doesn’t mean ethical, responsible or a whole lot of other things. My dog is a lot more loyal to what he cares about than Madoff is to those that he supposedly cared about.