What Bernie Madoff proved about America and the Jews

(JNS) — On Dec. 11, 2008, one of the worst events to rock the organized Jewish world was revealed on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Few outside of the financial world had ever heard of him before that day. But when news broke that Bernard Madoff’s Wall Street investment firm was a Ponzi scheme and that some of the Jewish community’s richest and most respected individuals, as well as philanthropies and educational institutions, had been the victims of a gigantic fraud, the impact was devastating.

More than $64.8 billion had disappeared when the impact of the 2008 financial crisis f...