July 2, 2009

Judge Denny Chin was refreshingly blunt — and even biblical — when, in ordering a 150-year prison sentence for acknowledged swindler Bernard Madoff, he called his deeds “exceptionally evil.” Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme left a trail of victims that ranged from small investors robbed of their retirements and financial security, to Jewish nonprofits whose missions have been crippled by his criminal duplicity.

Chin’s judgment does not close the book on the Madoff affair, not by a long shot, not so long as the victims remain uncompensated and not until his co-conspirators and enablers have been identified and brought to justice. It also doesn’t bring to an end the soul-searching within the Jewish community that is essential.

In an important piece in the magazine Contact, a publication of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, writer J.J. Goldberg urges the Jewish community to view the Madoff scandal not through a lens but through a mirror. In the spirit of Yom Kippur, writes Goldberg, the Madoff scandal demands that we look at ourselves, our organizations, our philanthropic culture, and our business practices, and examine our failings as a community. “A genuine examination of the Madoff scandal could teach us a lot about ourselves, if we really wanted to look,” writes Goldberg.

The goal is not self-flagellation, but preventing the next manifestation of exceptional evil.

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