On the day after his op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times on March 14, Greg Smith, a mid-level executive in the London office of Goldman Sachs had generated 19 million entries on Google. By three days later, that number had risen to 134 million.

Smith’s announcement of his departure from the storied firm whose culture he describes as “toxic and destructive” set off a shock wave heard ‘round the world. It was brutally criticized as naïve, but far more frequently praised as courageous, an “unprecedented revelation” of the distortions that have come to characterize Wall Street’s behavior. There’s been much discussion of greed, which appears to be the principle lubricant of the financial industry, and debate between those who think greed inherent in the market system and those who believe it can and should be expunged — or, at least, somehow contained. My own view is that what we are talking about here is not greed; it is avarice, in which all sense of proper proportion is lost.

Open gallery view Commuters walk past police barricades near the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011. Almost every week since August has brought news of firings by the world's biggest banks. Credit: Bloomberg

Bur relax: I am not about to launch into a disquisition on derivatives and credit swaps and the other arcane arrangements that led to the world financial crisis of 2008 and that have yet to be adequately addressed. Truth is, my own interest in the Smith saga is quirkily more parochial, particularly piqued by Smith’s inclusion among the proudest moments in his life his having won a bronze medal (in table tennis, aka ping-pong) in the Maccabiah games in Israel.

The Maccabiah games, together with the fact that Smith hails from South Africa, set me searching — and, sure enough, Smith graduated from the famous King David Schools in Johannesburg, schools whose mission statement says they aim to deliver “an excellent general education together with the study of Hebrew, Jewish Studies and the living of the Jewish calendar” and to produce “graduates who are menschen, confident and equipped to pursue any opportunity they wish to, who are proud of their Jewish heritage and its traditions, who have a love for learning, and a determination to contribute to their society.”

Read more at the Forward.

