American Jewish groups were still reeling Wednesday from multi-million dollar losses due to investments in the alleged fraud schme run by Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff.
Among them, the philanthropic foundation run by Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel announced that it had lost nearly all its assets, worth 15 million dollars, due to the Madoff funds’ collapse earlier this month.
The following is their statement:
To Our Friends:
We are deeply saddened and distressed that we, along with many others, have been the victims of what may be one of the largest investment frauds in history. We are writing to inform you that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had $15.2 million under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. This represented substantially all of the Foundation’s assets.
The values we stand for are more needed than ever. We want to assure you that the Foundation remains committed to carrying on the lifelong work of our founder, Elie Wiesel. We shall not be deterred from our mission to combat indifference, intolerance, and injustice around the world.
At this difficult time, the Foundation wishes to express its profound gratitude for all your support.
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
(Dov Gordon – YWN)
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16 Responses
It is beyond me why anyone has all their money with one manager. When greed blocks the eyes all of this is possible.
spend time worrying about torah causes and not every other “humanitarian” cause and maybe we will be better off. every “philanthropist” has money for every cause other than the furtherance of torah causes heaven forbid. maybe this is part of the reason hashem allowed this to happen. multi millions are given to hospitals etc while practically not a penny for any torah causes.(i guess there is no honor in supporting torah
i dont understand how madoff could have taken money from such an organization… no limit..
To takingbreak
Do you realize that most zedakah given today are by not frum jews or even christian charaties who support Israel and Torah.
Or would the meaning be that the foundations that lost part of their money in this fiasco is in spite of not having given to Torah ,and they were successful in accumilating this wealth in spite of not having given to your choise of zedakah.How about the frum jewish community who did give zedakah to Torah and gemilas chassadim and still lost untold fortunes in this geneva?and they werent looking for honor .
To takingbreak
Do you realize that most zedakah given today are by not frum jews or even christian charaties who support Israel and Torah.
Or would the meaning be that the foundations that lost part of their money in this fiasco is in spite of not having given to Torah ,and they were successful in accumilating this wealth in spite of not having given to your choise of zedakah.How about the frum jewish community who did give zedakah to Torah and gemilas chassadim and still lost untold fortunes in this geneva?and they werent looking for honor .And the moneis given to Hospitals?Thats not zedakah?Verofeh Yerapeh….where?in shul?
to #3 from which kind of organization would you have been able to “understand” how he did such a thing? from a yeshiva from a private person? stealing is stealing period. and it really does not matter who he did it to. he should be hung or maybe sent to live in saddams rat hole not in the apartment that was probably paid for with stolen money
#2 while I understand your frustration at those who give genorously to causes not in line with “your” thinking, I must urge you to be wise and not make cheshbonos for G-d.
Many many very genorous givers to Torah causes lost major sums of money in this outragious scandle. Additionally, those secular jews who did give to Jewish foundations and other Jewish causes athough not exactly your type, were still doing Chesed as they saw it. Charity for needy, the sick and for Jewish hospitals in Israel is still Tzedokah. We all must see the world beyond our immediate borders.
It is inapropriate for anybody to define the specific causes of this terrible financial scam.
We all would hope that more Jewish money finds its way to “our” causes but this finger pointing and cause and effect theory’s are off the mark.
It isn’t clear the Madoff intended originally to be running a Ponsi scheme. More likely he originally thought he was making a profit, and rather than admit occasional failures, he covered them up, and over time it turned into a criminal scheme. Probably only the current financial crisis convinced him that he would never recover.
A responsible charity should have known better than to put all their money in one investment, but they are only human (and in fact “diversify” is a financial command such as “buy low, sell high”).
Barukh ha-Shem the frum community wasn’t involved (we are “elite” enough to move in Madoff’s ciricles).
#9
I guess in your circles u dont believe YU, Ramaz, or SAR are frum.
While not on your level, they are Modern Orthodox Schools that lost large sums of money in the Madoff scandal.
to # 8 i am not minimizing the “kindness” in giving to other needs i am questioning if it is really based on kindness when these same “charitable” people give millions to hopitals and not a penny to local religious institutions that are in dire need. is that the sign of a charitable person or someone who seeks honor? can you watch a brother on the verge of bankruptct and ignore it being that it is not “their ” kind of charity. is this someone who is really kind and philanthropic or is it someone with other motives? please dont knee jerk react to this comment but stop and think rationally about what i am saying.in judaism our belief is that g-d gives you custody of the money to test how you will act with it.it is not simply totally ours to do with as we see fit. we may also benefit from it but we have responsibilities to act correctly with it
#11
I hope you realize that my answers to you are far from knee jerk reactions and quite the contrary they are responses from an experienced person who is knowledgable in charitable endeavors.
I acknowledged your frustration but for every major giver of charity there must be thousands (or more) who really do not give anything meaningful to any causes. How many times have we seen politicians forced to release their tax returnsonly to see that their charity contributions were embarrassingly low. I suspect most people do not give much. We are fortunate and proud that our Tzibbur is amazingly generous.
As far as looking for honor-
Yeshiva dinners and institutions bestow honor on generious couples but if you are involved in the process you know that there really is very little honor involved. It is personally difficult to ask friends and family to participate- yet many do it when asked to get involved because they are needed- not for the honor.
The motivation to give charity, how much and to where, should be judged by G-d, NOT US.
We all have our own special feelings for a specific project, cause or institution, this is reasonable. For example-If I like to help poor local families that is my perogative.Others may feel that soup kitchens in Israel should take their financial priority- this too is their right-you get the point.
What I cannot accept is you being critical of those that give, wherever they do- while giving those that don’t- a free pass. Maybe worry about the thousands of people that aren’t participating yet- to donate generously to Jewish causes and stop casting bad light on the many misguided charity givers. They are not keeping the money for themselves its going to help somebody.
Would I like Mike Bloomberg to give to Lakewood Yeshiva? Of course- but he gave millions to Mogen Dovid Adom Ambulance in Israel and we should simply say thank you and hope he gives more money to Jewish causes whatever they might be.
The point is while I would love to see millions of secular charity dollars come our way for Yeshivas and other community projects, it is unrealistic to expect it-WE ARE IN GOLUS!
We can work to get it by reaching out to secular Jews with a warm hand and honest intentions. Our Job is be Mekadesh Shem Shomayim. If we can work harder to show the world and ourselves that we are indeed worthy of their respect, the help you are looking for might just follow.
Until then we have no right to demand it.
There is no reason for a Jew to care for all these secular “humanitarian” charity causes — even if they dress themselves up in a Jewish name, with secular Jewish leadership.
to # 12 I do not judge those people who choose to give to their pet projects. what i am saying again is that these same people give to Jewish organizations who will help even for non jewish issues before helping religious jewish institutions. am i suppossed to be impressed with such (misguided) attitudes that knock on doors of religious people looking for donations for their institution (and its great works-including giving money to any and every need so long as it is not religious
I recognize the terrible setback suffered by charitable institutions affected by this whole sorry affair – I do feel for them and hope they can quickly resume their charitable efforts – but what puzzles me is why a charity (ok, a philanthropy) needs to invest the millions of dollars it collects.
Shouldn’t the objective be to get the money to the causes that need that money as quickly as possible (minus whatever expenses are needed to run the charity itself)?
Just because you didn’t read about it in the NY Times, it doesn’t mean that it did not happen.
The facts are that Yeshivos did lose in the Madoff affair; in the many millions. In particular is one large established Yeshiva in Brooklyn that took a hit for several $ million.
In addition, Yeshiva administrators are very worried that tuition payments have been curtailed to a large measure; probably due to the economic downturn.
this money went to anti-Jewish causes anyway