Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

ADL Bestows Honor on Madoff

[ ![][2]][2]

Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff was re-graced yesterday when the Anti-Defamation League awarded him the Inadvertently Good for the Jews prize for his work in “demolishing a centuries-old stereotype: that Jews are good with money.”

In a lavish ceremony held near the breakfast nook of the Madoffs’ Upper East Side apartment — where Madoff is currently confined to house arrest — ADL National Director Abraham Foxman presented Madoff with the coveted IGFJ prize (the “Igg-Fudge”).

Upon receiving the honor, Madoff was visibly moved, albeit not outside of his electronic security perimeter. Speaking at the podium/wet bar, he pledged to accept the award, and “within six months’ time, turn it into a Nobel Prize.”

The award — a Pyrex figurine depicting a cartoonish “Shylock” figure having his hook nose circumcised — honors “Jews who have subverted, nay, shechted Jewish canards until they’re bloodier than an Aaron’s Best rump roast.”

Past honorees include Paul Wolfowitz in the field of World Mastery, Steve Gutenberg, for Humor and Amy Winehouse, Intelligence.

Still, for some, Madoff is in a category all his own — quite possibly one he invented. “Madoff’s schemes had a ripple effect,” says Neal Isaacson, Tolerated Professor of Judaeophobic Studies at Toronto’s Cartier University. “The alleged Ponzi scheme exposed the financial idiocy of hundreds if not thousands of Jews across the investment world. At last, this shameful, lucrative chapter in our history can be closed.”

Foxman agrees. “With his spectacular loss of billions of dollars,” he said, “Madoff has accomplished what billions of ADL press releases and full-page ads have somehow been unable to.

“It’s a shande for the goyim, and we couldn’t be prouder.”

“The Daily Show” writer Rob Kutner’s annual Purim shpiel, THE SHUSHAN CHANNEL, goes live March 9 at 92Y Tribeca.

[]: https://forward-hcl50.orc.scoolaid.net/backward-purim/

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version