Jews Fear Madoff Backlash

The Anti-Defamation League cites a spike in anti-Semitic comments online after Madoff's Dec. 11 arrest for stealing $50 billion. A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented the case as "the answer to every Jew-hater's wish list." Madoff was a prominent Jewish financier who robbed his clients blind using a giant Ponzi scheme, using the promise of large profits to attract his victims. The early investors make the profits, but only from the money of new investors. The later investors lose everything. Madoff's victim list is a Who's Who of famous American Jews, fanning the wide held stereotype that they stick together and are obsessed with making money.

Yeshiva University, one of the nation's foremost Jewish institutions of higher education, lost $110 million; Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, lost $90 million; director Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation acknowledged unspecified losses; and a $15 million foundation established by Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel was wiped out. Jewish federations and hospitals have lost millions and some foundations have had to close.See Chick's WHERE'S RABBI WAXMAN?