Bernie Madoff Deflowers. . . . Hadassah?

Pardon me while I barf

My grandmother belonged to an organization called Hadassah. It never had any particular political meaning, at least to me; it was just a group that Yiddish-speaking old women used to belong to back in the old days in the Bronx. When you say "Hadassah" I think of my grandparents' generation, very wholesome and all that.

Well, I guess that borscht-and-babushkas image is about to change forever. Word crept out of the Bernie Madoff sewer today that the ever-reliably creepy Madoff had an affair with the former chief financial officer of Hadassah.

So says a new tell-all book by the married lady in question.

What makes the whole thing surrealistic is that this woman, and her organization, were Madoff victims.

Sheryl "Weinstein and her husband of 37 years, Ronald, were forced to sell their Manhattan home on the Upper East Side a week earlier because they had 'lost everything,' she told the judge," according to Bloomberg.

Well, I guess she has got to earn back that money somehow. Why not do so by humiliating herself and her husband? St. Martin's Press has handled release of the book in hush-hush fashion; note the "to be announced" line where the author should be in its Amazon listing, right next to an illustration of the book's cover, showing Mrs. Weinstein's name.

The Madoff saga was always nauseating, but now we're really testing the limits of our intestinal juices. A British newspaper reported:

Her book 'Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me' is said to go into explicit detail about their affair.

And it will also include photographs and some intimate descriptions of Madoff, said John Murphy, spokesman for the publishing company, St. Martin's.

As my grandmother would have said, "feh." My poor grandmother. Life was so simple then. No Madoffs to worry about, only pogroms.

I just hope that this is the end of it. If there are more "Bernie screwed me" revelations, in the non-financial sense of the word "screw," life just won't be worth living.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.