I admit that my fascination with the Madoff scandal is related to the fact that I personally know people and institutions affected by his scheme, particularly through dealings with Ezra Merkin, whose family I knew in my childhood. But Madoff seems to be a popular metaphor with others, as in this article by Frank Rich.
In my previous post, I agreed with Krugman that Madoff is just a metaphor for all the greed on Wall Street. And I concur with Rich that he serves well as a metaphor for the wider greed of Bush & Co. But more specifically, for me Madoff and Merkin also stand as metaphors for Jewish insularity, a topic I have written about in the past.
In the article about Merkin from the WSJ, linked to above, the author wonders how such a smart guy like Merkin could have been fooled by Madoff. I agree with many of the commenters in the article, that it is highly unlikely that Merkin was indeed fooled. But regardless of what the truth is regarding Merkin himself, the question is how did all those other people get fooled by Madoff and Merkin? I would argue that it is no coincidence many of these victims are Jews, and of those, many are Orthodox Jews. Insularity is particularly strong amongst Orthodox Jews, the world I grew up in. Insularity leads to an instinctive trust of a member of the tribe. Many of those trusting people said to themselves “a guy with a yarmulke is one of us, and he would never intentionally harm a fellow Jew. A goy, maybe, but not one of us.” It seems so stupid and trivial, and yet this ridiculous emotion led many extremely successful and intelligent people to act in a highly foolish manner.
It is this very same insularity, that leads many Jews, again mostly Orthodox Jews, to blindly support Israel’s actions. The thinking goes: “Israelis are Jews, and Jews would never intentionally do anything bad, so Israelis are never guilty of doing anything wrong.” This is reinforced by the feeling of victimhood that comes out of the Holocaust: “Jews are victims, so ipso facto we can never victimize anyone else.” It is no coincidence that many financially successful American Orthodox Jews fund the worst aspect of Israeli society, the Settlements movement, which is led mostly by Orthodox Jews. When it’s all about the tribe, one’s analytical judgement and standards of morality just go out the window.
Pointing this out is not the least bit anti-semitic. I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, a book I highly recommend. He points out how reluctant we are to talk about an individual’s cultural background as a factor in their success or failure, because we see such talk as xenophobia or cultural bias. But to ignore such cultural factors is to ignore reality. Gladwell notes that every culture has good sides and bad sides, and sometimes a good side in one context can be bad in another (and vice versa). Jewish insularity was crucial for Jewish survival over a couple millennia, but in other contexts it is quite a negative trait. Of course, such insularity is not specific to the Jewish tribe. Many Arabs and Muslims are willing to overlook Hamas’ most egregious actions for the same reason.
I write about Jewish insularity because I am intimately familiar with it. But my criticism is not directed at Jews per se, but at insularity. Loving your tribe is a wonderful thing, but it is no excuse for closing your heart and mind to reality. One does so at great peril.
Tags: Anti-Semitism, Hypocrisy, Jews