The Talmud, the Stock Market and Bernie the Goniff

Bernard L. Madoff has run off with the store so to speak -- the store of cash that is, which Judaics from Steven Spielberg to Elie Wiesel had stashed with this agent of of the world's second oldest profession, whose patron is that hoary old rascal who Shakespeare dubbed Shylock and the am-haaretz on the Lower East Side call the goniff.

I hesitated writing this column because the acolytes of Wilhelm Marr are coming out of the woodwork pointing to the Judaic ethnicity of Madoff, as if there are not a legion of gentile crooks and con-men running amok in the stock market these days, fleecing peasantry and gentry from coast to coast. A crook is a crook, whether Catholic, Hindu or Talmudic, and in my view they should all be hanged with an equal length of rope.

Madoff's enormous heist (do my eyes deceive me when I grok the sum of $50 billion?!), interests this newshound precisely because it undercuts a stereotype of the Jew-haters: that Judaics are always the "smart money," evincing a fiduciary adhesion surpassing the strongest bonding agents in Das Kapital's marketplace: always robbing gentiles and profiting communally from the rip-off.

This sub-cellar stereotype is actually misdirection emanating from a resonance of rabbinic propaganda that has been covertly seeded in right wing ranks ever since Hitler chose the Protocols over Entdecktes Judenthum as his movement's signature reference work.

Contemporary professional anti-semites push a post-modern version of this disinformation when they maintain that Judaism, or its potent offshoots, Judaic culture and tribalism, always defraud gentiles while enriching Judaics. This is sheerest ignorance reflecting a sound-bite knowledge --of the little bit is dangerous variety -- of the posek's sacred Torah SheBeal Peh.

Contrary to the received opinion, Judaism is not good for Judaics. Any religion that inculcates cheating God is going to end up having its followers cheat each other. They may cheat the gentiles first, but sooner or later they'll give each other a haircut too, and not just on Lag B'omer.

Judaism runs the gamut from one-upmanship over God to the enslavement of married couples by the torturous and labyrinthine halachos of Niddah (laws on menstruation). S'iz shver tsu zayn a yid ("It's no fun being a Judaic" --my translation).

It is certainly true that Orthodox Judaism teaches that under certain circumstances, the Neshama HaElyonah-deficient subhumanity otherwise known as the goyim are fair game for every imaginable theft and deception. More