Jews and Money

In the wake of Bernie Madoff’s ruinous investment schemes, Abe Foxman takes a cultural and political look at the many variations throughout history of the assumptions made about Jews and money. These include Jews as greedy global capitalists; Jews as wealthy secret communists; Jews as cheapskates; and Jews controlling the media with their money to unduly influence society. Foxman makes the case that these stereotypes have permeated cultures globally and argues that these beliefs are rooted in deep-seated and pervasive anti-Semitism. As with all forms of bigotry, society at large needs to respond to the persistence of stereotypes by educating the young, denouncing hate speech, and by encouraging Jews, like all groups, to express pride in their ethnic and religious heritage.

Abraham H. Foxman is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and one of today’s preeminent voices against hatred, discrimination, and violence in the United States and worldwide. Born in Poland in 1940, he survived the Holocaust when his parents entrusted him to their Catholic nursemaid, who baptized him and raised him as her own son. Foxman has been with the ADL for more than thirty-five years, and for nearly half of them has served as the national director. He is the author of The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control and Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism. Foxman has been awarded several honors including the Interfaith Committee of Remembrance Lifetime Achievement Award, the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Leadership Award from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and, in 2006, the Knight of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian honor. He lives in New York.