News today has it that Bernie Madoff's son committed suicide. That raises the interesting, perennial question, Should the sins of the fathers be visited on the children?
I used to live in a Chicago suburb (after a moment's though I decided against naming it) that was famous (or infamous) for being home to two or three big Mafia figures. One of my neighbors talked about going to the local high school with the daughter of one of these guys. The neighbor said the Mafioso's daughter was pretty much shunned by her classmates. (You can read the latter's own story in her book Mafia Princess. Disclaimer: I haven't read it.) To me it's a very interesting discussion, whether it's fair or not to view such people as tainted by the lives or actions of their parents.
The great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called Ghosts. This play revolves around a mother and her son—and the "ghost" of the dead husband and father. It turns out (spoiler alert!) that because the father had led a very dissolute and sexually promiscuous life, which his wife very assiduously covered up, the son at the end of the play is starting to show dementia due to the syphilis that he inherited from his father. So that is an instance where in a very literal and physical way, the sins of the father were visited upon the children (but it seems the wife and mother deserves a good deal of blame for completely whitewashing her husband's memory).
I think it's an interesting issue. I think the Old Testament says that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, but that may seem very harsh to us nowadays.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
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It's really a shame that a family as Bernie Madoffs has taken such a deep dive from sitting atop the world to this kind of devastation. I don't wish death on any of the Madoffs or anyone else. I do believe however that the Madoffs as a family knowingly betrayed and jilted many of their investors who had completely trusted them to the point of complete devastation. The Madoffs were wrong in what they did but I don't believe that my being heartless to them or anyone at a time of suffering and despair is an answer for anything at all or is at all appropriate. Even as a nonreligious person I don't buy into revenge. In my eyes we have a judicial system that despite shortcomings and need for overhaul from time to time is by far more suited to dealing with the Madoffs or other guilty persons for whatever transgretions than me or you. What a holy book has to say may be appropriate to a particular congregation but is by no means a universal concept for code of conduct. I question the word "sin" with its connotations and the way it can loosely be thrown around to implicate guilt. Ethical behaviour however I personally see as a benefit to society with laws to govern what does or doesn't fly. In short I value the findings of a court of justice over the rage of some angry would-be lynch mob whether that mob is straight out of some congregation or elsewhere. There is a saying "Injustice is relatively easy to bear. What stings is justice" I believe this is true only I hope that indeed it's justice which ultimately prevails.
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