Madoff and Jewish Business Wisdom

Rabbi Levi Brackman is author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, a wisdom that was embarrassingly illustrated by swindler Bernard Madoff. Now Rabbi Brackman tells us: Madoff wasn't acting alone. He now believes that "Dishonest business people must be ousted rather than be legitimized due to their wealth." 

 

Brackman is perfectly right that Madoff thrived in a  certain environment. It is the environment that makes rabbis write books like "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success." It is the environment that appoints people as community leaders because they made a lot of money, and never mind if they made it honestly, if they won it in a poker game, or if they earned it by smuggling rum, juggling books, selling defective aircraft engines in World War II, Ponzi schemes or selling underwater real estate.  

 

The problem, Rabbi Brackman, is not why Madoff was able to swindle people for so long, but rather why Madoff got so much more honor than far more worthy people who spent their life in quiet service to fellow humans or in intellectual pursuits, and whose only crime was that they did not "earn" money by stealing it from others. The problem, Rabbi Brackman, is to understand why you -- and why all of the Jewish community -- are so obsessed with money.

 

The great pillars of the Jewish community today - and we all know their names - got to be that way not because of their great intellectual insights or moral rectitude, and not because of their forward looking vision or brilliant political views. They got to be leaders solely because they have money.

 

Dishonest businessmen need to be put in jail, not just ousted. Honest businessmen must give over the leadership of the Jewish community to intellectual and moral leaders. How much did Maimonides gross in a year? How about Albert Einstein?  Theodor Herzl was not a millionaire and neither was Chaim Weizmann and neither was David Ben-Gurion or Martin Buber. .

 

If Moses himself were to return to Earth, he would never be elected a leader of the Jewish Community. He would not be dressed right. He would have nothing in the bank. He would have no "gonneckshuns." 

 

In a well ordered society, the rich consult the wise as to who to use their money to help people. In the community that is ruled by the Madoff-Brackman ethic, wealth is considered a mark of wisdom. The rich are enthroned as leaders, and  use their money to tell the Jewish community how to think.

 

A man cannot serve two masters, Rabbi Brackman. Remember that one?  Money is not the source of morality or wisdom, nor a sign of it.

 

There is no "Jewish Wisdom for Business Success." A wise person values other things above money. .

 

Ami Isseroff