Newsweek just released it list of the 50 most influential American rabbis. But who is America's worst rabbi? This man is.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America. Here's proof:
Harboring Some Admiration for Bernie, And Less For Sully
Rabbi Avi Shafran
Something tells me I won’t make any new friends (and might even lose some old ones) if I confess to harboring some admiration for Bernard Madoff.
And to make things worse, I can’t muster much for Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a full commercial airliner in the Hudson River back in January.
Let me try to explain. Please.
Mr. Madoff committed a serious economic crime on an unprecedented scale for such wrongdoing, and in the process ruined the financial futures of numerous people and institutions, including charitable ones, worldwide. There can be no denying that.
Yet I can’t quite bring myself to join the large, loud chorus of those who have condemned him to – to take Ralph Blumenthal’s judgment in The New York Times Magazine – the Pit, the deepest circle of Dante’s Inferno. Others have devised and publicly proclaimed creative and exquisite tortures of their own for the disgraced businessman – Woody Allen fantasized Madoff being attacked by clients reincarnated as lobsters, and Elie Wiesel wished the investor confined to a solitary cell and forced to watch his victims on a screen bewail their changed fortunes. The fury of the bilked has yielded opprobrium and loathing that isn’t visited on mass murderers.
I think the revulsion may say more about the revolted – and our money-obsessed and vengeance-obsessed society – than it does about Madoff. His crime, after all, was really remarkable only for its longevity and its scope. The Torah teaches that stealing is a sin, but it doesn’t differentiate between misappropriating a million dollars and pilfering a dime. And as to the sheer number of people defrauded by the thief of the moment, well, anyone who cheats on his federal income tax is defrauding 300 million of his fellow citizens. Few though, in such cases, invoke Dante.
What is more, Madoff likely began his crime spree in the hope of rewarding, not swindling, investors, and by the time it became clear he wouldn’t be able to do that, he was already deeply entangled – and daily becoming more entangled – in the web he wove.
None of that, though, is to belittle the great pain Mr. Madoff caused, and is certainly no cause for affording the iniquitous investment broker respect. No, what I admire about him has to do with his owning up to his crime.
Think about it. The man knew for years that his scheme would eventually come apart and that prosecution loomed, yet he took no steps to flee, huge bribe in hand, to some country lacking extradition treaties. Idi Amin, we might recall, died of old age in luxury. Madoff’s millions, moreover, could have easily bought him a new face and identity papers; he could spent his senior years tanned and well-fed among the sunbirds of Miami Beach.
Instead, though, he chose to essentially turn himself in and admit guilt. He apologized to his victims, acknowledging that he had “deeply hurt many, many people,” and adding, “I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for what I have done.”
No one can know if those words reflect the feelings in his heart, but I don’t claim any right to doubt that they do. And facing one’s sins and regretting them is the essence of teshuvah – which we are all enjoined to do for our personal aveiros, however small or large.
No such sublimity of spirit, though, was in evidence in any of the public acts or words of Mr. Sullenberger. He saved 155 lives, no doubt about it, and is certainly owed the hakoras hatov of those he saved, and of their families and friends. And he executed tremendous skill.
But no moral choice was involved in his act. He was on the plane too, after all; his own life depended on undertaking his feat no less than the lives of others. He did what anyone in terrible circumstances would do: try to stay alive. He was fortunate (as were his passengers) that he possessed the talents requisite to the task, but that’s a tribute to his training, and to the One Who instilled such astounding abilities in His creations (and Whose help the captain was not quoted as acknowledging). Basketball players are highly skilled, too – and heroes, in fact, to some. But I have never managed to understand that latter fact.
Sully has reportedly inked a $3 million book deal with HarperCollins, and is also planning a second book of inspirational poems; Bernie, likely for the rest of his life, will languish in jail.
That may make societal sense, but personally, I’m still unmoved by the pilot, and, at least somewhat, inspired by the penitent.
Rabbi Avi Shafran Director of Public Affairs for Agudath Israel of America.
First, Shafran and Agudah defended Rubashkin, even though Rubashkin stole from poor undocumented workers and from other Jews, and even though the alleged abuses Rubashkin and his cohort committed against these defenseless undocumented workers are truly horrific.
And now this. Bernie Madoff as decent man, and a true hero as not much more than average, if that.
(One can only speculate but it is, I think, likely if Sully Sullenberger were Jewish, Shfran would have found nothing but praise for him.)
This Shafran quote is truly astonishing:
…The Torah teaches that stealing is a sin, but it doesn’t differentiate between misappropriating a million dollars and pilfering a dime. And as to the sheer number of people defrauded by the thief of the moment, well, anyone who cheats on his federal income tax is defrauding 300 million of his fellow citizens. Few though, in such cases, invoke Dante.…
Yes, Rabbi Shafran, both are crimes. But the real analogy is not between someone who cooks the books and cheats his way out of paying $100,000 in taxes. (Think the Spinka tax fraud and money laudering scandal, for example.) That crime steals $0.0003 from each citizen of America. It has an impact, to be sure, and combined with other similar crimes committed by others, that impact grows. But that impact is far, far less than Bernie Madoff's.
Madoff drove America deeper into recession. He destroyed the lives of dozens of people, some of whom are bnow destitute save their homes, which are now up for sale. He stole hundreds of millions of dollars from charities. That theft in turn has made the lives of the poor, ill and suffering exponentially worse. Hundreds of people lost their jobs directly due to Bernie Madoff. Tens of thousands more have oe will soon have lost theirs as a secondary result.
The real anaology is between Bernie Madoff and someone who commits economic terrorism on a mass scale, crippling the economy of country, driving many into poverty and causing some to die due to lack of proper services.
Bernie Madoff has far more in common with Osama Bin Laden than he does with a tax cheat.
True, Bernie did not set out to destroy America while Bin Laden did.
But Bernie committed fraud on a massive scale, fraud he knew from day one could leave his investors broke and could devastate Wall Street. He was Osama Bin Laden with nuclear tipped airliners, and his 9-11 will be remembered as long as Bin Laden's is.
Shafran writes:
…The Torah teaches that stealing is a sin, but it doesn’t differentiate between misappropriating a million dollars and pilfering a dime. And as to the sheer number of people defrauded by the thief of the moment, well, anyone who cheats on his federal income tax is defrauding 300 million of his fellow citizens. Few though, in such cases, invoke Dante.…
The Torah was written before banks, before stock markets, before investment brokerages and retirement funds.
It envisions a thief stealing sheep, getting caught and then returning those sheep plus a few extra as a penalty.
Bernie Madoff can never return what he stole – no one can.
His crime is closer to the analogy made for lashon hara, evil gossip. Take a feather pillow, rip it open and let the feathers fly in a brisk, swirling wind. Can you find all the feather? Can you gather them and put them all back? Of course not.
Bernie's crime is like that. But his pillow was the size of New York City and contained the hopes, dreams and lives of millions of people. Bernie can't replace those. No one can.
Imagine if a thief stole all the goats sheep in Biblical Israel. And then, after eating as many as he could, the thief took the rest, killed them and burned them to ashes. Israel is left without wool, without milk, without cheese, without animals for the Passover sacrifice. Hundreds, maybe thousands are without income. People freeze to death or get sick, suffer and die due to exposure and lack of proper nutrition.
In Avi Shafran's world, that biblical thief is no different from the thief who steals one goat from a large heard.
A rabbi I once studied with is fond of saying the Shulkhan Arukh, the four part Code of Jewish Law, is missing its fifth section. That section? Common sense.
The two thieves are not equivalent. Their crimes are not equal.
The thief who stole one goat needs to make restitution. Bernie Madoff needs to be locked in a cell without food and water until God miraculously saves him or he dies.
Bernie Madoff is not a common thief – he's a murderer.
And Avi Shafran is unquestionably the worst rabbi in America.
Newsweek list of America's most influential rabbis.
[Hat Tip: steve.]