“The name ‘Madoff’ has overnight gone from being revered to reviled in the Helfman family,” Mr. Helfman said on Friday. His grandmother, at 98, relied on her Madoff money to pay for round-the-clock care, he said, and his two children’s college funds were wiped out.

“Thirty-six years of loyalty, through two generations, and this is what we get,” he said.

The news was equally devastating for the Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Mass., which works to reverse the dilution of Jewish identity through intermarriage and assimilation by sending teenagers to Israel and supporting other Jewish education efforts.

The foundation was forced on Friday to dismiss its small staff and shut down its programs to cope with its losses in the Madoff funds, according to Deborah Coltin, its executive director.

“We’ve canceled everything as of today, everything,” she said tearfully.

Ms. Coltin said she did not know how the little foundation came to be so exposed to the Madoff firm. Its most recent tax filings show that it had $7 million at the end of 2006, with $143,344 in stocks and the rest in “government securities.”

It reported the sale that year of “Bernie Madoff” securities, but did not explain what those securities were.

Sam Englebardt, a media investor in Los Angeles, said several relatives had entrusted virtually all of their assets to Mr. Madoff  and he understood why.

“It seems like a huge over-allocation, I know,” Mr. Englebardt said. “But remember, they had started out small and invested over 5 years, 15 years, 30 years  and every year they got a great return, and they could always take money out without ever having a problem.”