First Bernie Madoff. Now this. The sweat-o-meter at the B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League has to be in the red zone.
By "this" I don't mean Israel's bombing of the Gaza Strip, Hamas' rocket attacks and the predictable fallout of increased hostility all around; specifically, if history is any judge, a sure beneficiary will be amped-up anti-Semitism in some parts of the world.
I'm talking about Herman Rosenblat and his romantic made-up story about the Holocaust, a concentration camp and his wife of 50 years, Roma. This is like Einstein pumping up his academic credentials. Why do it?
Mr. Madoff makes Jews look bad, according to a story in the New York Times - whose self-conscious Jewish owners didn't used to print Jewish stories a few decades ago - because he reinforced the anti-Semitic stereotype of the greedy, plotting, thieving financier.
Fortunately, for reasonable people, the former hedge fund magician-turned-Ponzi has plenty of WASPy company, even just in the last six months. The fact that his ruse ruined some outstanding Jewish charities along with hundreds of other people and secular organizations is a tragic sidebar reality of his con.
But reason often doesn't prevail and, at a minimum, according to the Times story, quoting the web site for Israel's daily, Haaretz, "The anti-Semite's new Santa is Bernard Madoff."
Then along comes Mr. Rosenblat, who actually did survive the Buchenwald concentration camp, which you'd think would be a tale hair-raising enough to get him a book deal, as it has for many other Holocaust eyewitnesses. But, apparently for fame and some potential fortune, he folded in fictionalized pieces that added a more Hollywoodesque ending, starting with his wife feeding him apples from outside the camp fence to their operatic reunion on a New York blind date a dozen years later.
Historians, other Holocaust survivors and those - Jewish or not - who never want the Hitler years to be repeated were horrified that one fake concentration camp story would only give Holocaust deniers ammunition.
When the truth dam burst, Mr. Rosenblat showed an ongoing talent for fable by claiming that the apple thing was really just a dream and, urged on by his mother in another dream, he just wanted to remake his history "to make good in the world" and bring "good feelings to a lot of people."
Well, who wouldn't want that? Mr. Madoff, apparently.
When Mr. Rosenblat was exposed this last week as lying about the whole apples thing, the truth embarrassed the publisher of his fairytale book (Penguin Group), his agent (Andrea Hurst), his ghost-writer (Susanna Margolis) who suspected the story was an apparition but didn't call him on it, and the producer (Harris Salomon) of a film based on Mr. Rosenblat's version of events. It being the movies, Mr. Salomon just said he'd switch it to a fictional story. The real life phony script isn't remedied quite so easily.
Mr. Rosenblat's most famous fleeced victim, and the one mentioned most prominently, however, is Oprah Winfrey, who had him and his wife on her show. Ms. Winfrey anointed the apple/camp/reunion saga as "the single greatest love story" she'd witnessed in over two decades of Tom Cruise couch-jumping and many other expressions of inspirational romance on her show.
His agent even cited the appearance on Oprah is somehow being evidence that the tale was true. "It did not seem like it would not be true" after that, Ms. Hurst told the NY Times.
The ADL and other concerned agencies will try to sort out the bad news for the Jewish community in all of these events. At a minimum, the answer to the "is it good for the Jews?" question is quite clear in the Madoff and Rosenblat scandals.
But I'm here to defend Oprah. Don't blame her just because she's famous. Oprah, whose hugely successful business did not depend on the Bernie Madoff mirage but on successfully mining and showcasing people's emotional veins every day of the week for 22 years, is, after all, as the tabs say about other stars, just like us. Once in awhile she gets fleeced.
The last time, when author James Frey was busted for making stuff up after Oprah blessed him on her show, she made Frey come back on the air and whipped him for it. We'll see if Mr. Rosenblat shows up on Oprah in a hair shirt.
Criticize her, if you have to, for her ubiquity, her confessional approach to life, her diet or her love life. But no scapegoating Oprah allowed on this one.