A recent editorial in the Jerusalem Post contains the following extraordinary suggestion:
From a Jewish perspective, [Bernard] Madoff has brought shame upon our people and disrepute to Judaism.
I am mystified by this. I don't consider myself implicated in Madoff's crimes in any way, no more than I would in some recent offence (of which I had no part) committed by a non-Jewish criminal. One can't even say of Madoff's crimes that they were acts institutionally or symbolically associated with a collective Jewish body, as when diaspora Jews worry about policies of the Israeli state of which they are critical. Unless, that is, one thinks that financial malpractice is a typically Jewish misdemeanour - not a thought one would expect to find in the Jerusalem Post, that thought being part of the lore of anti-Semitism. If therefore there is - as the editorial claims - something in Jewish tradition that 'makes Madoff's Jewishness pertinent' to his having (or not) brought shame on the Jewish people, this would be an aspect of Jewish tradition to be regretted, and discarded or amended.