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Another Day, Another Ponzi Scheme

Plus, a questionable study and a Real Housewive’s tale

by
Ari M. Brostoff
April 14, 2010

• Steven Byers, who scored $225 million in a real estate investment Ponzi scheme targeting Orthodox Jews, was convicted of fraud yesterday by the same federal judge who convicted Bernie Madoff. [NY Daily News]

• In a case of people-unclear-on-the-concept, 90-year-old alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk—extradited by Germany from the U.S. last year—called his trial, currently proceeding in Munich, “torture.” [JTA]

• A report on global anti-Semitism released by Tel Aviv University last week claims that incidents doubled last year—because, leftist journalist Max Blumenthal says, it includes such dubiously qualifying events as the release of the Goldstone Report (written, of course, by a self-identifying Zionist Jew). [Huffington Post]

• The Israeli government has denied conductor and political provocateur Daniel Barenboim permission to perform with his youth orchestra in Gaza, on the grounds that no concert shall be held while Gilad Shalit remains imprisoned there. No word on whether Hamas wants to trade Shalit for a 15-year-old second violist. [Coteret]

• Tomorrow you can buy Real Housewife of New York City Jill Zarin’s new book, Secrets of a Jewish Mother, in which “you’ll learn how to make her methods your very own.” Then you too can go on Good Morning New York and apologize for acting like a crazy person on reality television.
[My Fox New York]

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.