Frankly, I found this article offensive. Epstein is criticizing Jews for not living like Jews are supposed to live. It's as if someone criticized American blacks for trying to become lawyers instead of doing what they do best: play basketball. Or saying Hillary Clinton shouldn't have run for president... women are supposed to be home cooking dinner. Just because some Jewish stereotypes are positive doesn't make them any less offensive when they are forced on a person. In reality, the assimilation of Jews into American society is a good thing - it's a sign that we are living in a free society (more or less) that strives to treat everyone equality and enables one to pursue his/her goals no matter who he or she is or where he or she comes from. The only reason Jews have this "tribal" mentality to begin with is that it was a necessity for survival during centuries of persecution and discrimination. If there is no longer persecution and discrimination, Jews will become exactly like Methodists and Presbyterians in American society (in other words, indistinguishable as a group from their fellow citizens), and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The less tribalism we have, the better. There will still be variety in America, but it will be based on individual choice, and not imposition of ethnic stereotypes. Madoff was a scumbag, no more no less. Mr. Epstein, you may have been shocked, but the fact is Jews can be scumbags too. All our ethnics groups have saints and sinners. In the end you are just reinforcing the negative stereotype of the greedy Jew by emphasizing the importance of Madoff being Jewish. It doesn't matter; he's a crook and should be punished. It has nothing to do with law-abiding Jews who just want to live their lives as they see fit.
‘Uncle Bernie’ And the Jews
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
Madoff's handiwork might also not have been altogether without purpose if it eliminates a number of the trust funds wealthy Jewish parents, usually acting on the advice of savvy lawyers looking for tax loopholes, have conferred upon their children. The few young Jewish men I have known who have trust funds, making life all too easy, have somehow along the way lost both their Jewishness and, by not working for a living, their edge. It is one thing to live on your investments; it is quite another to live on the investments of money you yourself never earned. "Money is funny," Gertrude Stein said, and the lady knew whereof she spoke.
Reading the scores of thousands of words written about the Madoff affair, I cannot help wondering if I wouldn't myself have been susceptible to having been cheated by Bernie Madoff. I can all too easily imagine a wealthy friend putting me onto a good thing by arranging for Madoff Securities to take my money under its large protective wing, then sitting back, noting the impressive gains on my monthly statements, until one morning waking to learn that I had been had and was now tapped out. One of the only reasons this didn't happen, I suspect, is that, over a long and undaring life, I neglected to accumulate the $4 million that Uncle Bernie required as an ante to get into the game.
My father used to say that it is good to be cheated every once in a while. Being cheated, he held, teaches humility, reminds you that you aren't as smart as you thought you were; it's good for the mental hygiene. John D. Rockefeller Sr.'s father used to claim that he cheated his sons every chance he got; it smartened them up, with results we all know. Will Bernie Madoff's duping so many people of their money, Jews prominent among them, smarten them up?
A few weeks ago I spoke over the phone with a Hungary-born historian, a man who, as befits a scholar from an older culture, fancies himself taking long views. He suggested that I write a book about the efflorescence of the Jews in 20th-century America. The book would tote up their remarkable contributions to science, scholarship, the arts, journalism, entertainment, commerce, education. "It is a big subject," he said, "and calls for a big book. But you know of course that the end is already written. The story of the Jews in America is now over."
He didn't say it straight out, because he didn't have to, but what was implied is that American Jews have lost the great energy that made them such a force in American life. They will never again, if he is correct, equal their earlier achievements. There have been too many Tylers, Mackenzies, Hunters and Kellys, too much intermarriage, too many doglegs (both left and right), too many inept scions walking around frivolously spending trust-fund money. As they become ever more assimilated, American Jews, my friend the historian was saying, will no longer constitute a distinctive group with a distinguished role to play in American life.
Which brings us back to Bernie Madoff, who has performed the valuable—if very expensive—service of demonstrating to his coreligionists, among others, that the waters of life are not as pacific as they seem. Sharks are down there, and barracudas, and other scarifying species, some of them selling impressive-sounding financial security, but really waiting to eat you alive. Tyler and Mackenzie, Hunter and Kelly had better learn now that life isn't going to be a smooth swim, going with the current all the way home. If you don't believe it, ask Uncle Bernie.
Epstein is the author, most recently, of “Fred Astaire” (Yale University Press).
© 2009
Discuss