Notes &
You did not cause the anti-Semitic insults about Jews and money, but you caused them to be revived…Yes, it is unfair that your Jewishness has become part of the storyline. But you just reminded the bigots who grew up playing The Jew Game that it still strikes a familiar chord…You have given the Jew-haters material for a decade of hate gardening.
- Rabbi Marc Gellman’s Open Letter to Bernie Madoff (via adamkatz)
Re-blogging because:
1) It’s really painful to acknowledge just how bad Madoff has been for Jews. Though to be fair to the media, where Rabbi Gellman isn’t as charitable, I do think that Jews, ourselves, have played a role in making this a story about “a Jew.” We feel betrayed by one of our own and in wanting to make our condemnation clear, for better and worse, have made this, in part, a story about our community.
2) Continuing on an earlier theme, it’s an open letter; you could imagine this being posted on Madoff’s wall or as a blog comment, couldn’t you? Though, here, as it traditionaly is, the open letter is simply a rhetorical device, the friction for this type of 1to1toMany communication is evaporating, and on a micro-level, we will see a lot more of it.
