The Sackler family forgot Pirkei Avot
The Sackler Family Tombstone:
the countless deaths
the ravaging of communities and the destruction of families
the birth of the fentanyl epidemic
The Sackler family forgot Pirkei Avot, “A good name excelleth them all” (4:17). The generators of the opioid epidemic get to keep their billions in personal wealth. But not their billions, nor, in the currency of today, not even trillions could repurchase their reputation. It is trashed, to no one’s fault but their own.
Under a multi-billion dollar legal settlement, the Sacklers’ drug company will go into bankruptcy to pay the settlement costs for the damages that their manufactured opioid crisis caused. The Sacklers face no civil liability. The Sacklers do not need to concede any wrongdoing.
Only the Sacklers themselves will find comfort in this phyrric legal victory. The Sacklers took a once sterling reputation as philanthropists and threw it away.
The Sackler name will do down in the history of greed and evil at or near the top of the list. The Sacklers are spurned by all of the worthy charities they once supported — all but one, anyway. Tel Aviv University’s medical school still keeps the Sackler name. Even that makes no difference. Everyone knows what the Sacklers did, and knows that they express no remorse, so their name on a medical school stands as its own refutation. It is not an honor. It is a dishonor.
Victims’ advocates agreed to settle the claims against the Sacklers without them needing to admit guilt for the simple reason that otherwise no funds would be forthcoming to remediate some of the enormous damage that the Sackler opioids wrought. Add to the Sackler ignominy: The family coerced the poor victims into a settlement in order to protect the Sacklername, a protection, as we note, that the Sacklers and the Sacklers alone credit. Nobody agrees to fork over billions if they’re innocent.
Those who agreed to the settlement should feel no shame. Their first responsibility was to the victims (those who, having survived the opioids, “only” became addicts), their families and their communities.
There is no shame because it was not necessary to secure any formal legal declaration that the Sacklers were guilty. It would have been superfluous. Again, the innocent do not hand over billions.
Meanwhile, no amount of funds can remediate the profound damage that the Sacklers wrought to individuals, families and communities [see tombstone inscription above]. If the Talmud says that for one who saves a Jewish life it is as if he saved the world, well, this also means that the Sacklers have destroyed countless entire worlds. Go to sleep at night with that.
We’re not expecting a criminal prosecution, although the settlement does not free the Sacklers of the possibility. It won’t likely happen because . . . Go Fight City Hall with its billions in resources. No matter.
The Sacklers don’t understand that the worst criminal conviction is of one’s reputation.
The family apparently thinks it is fortunate to have avoided jail. People who did what they did would not get it: a good name excelleth them all.
Copyright © 2023 by the Intermountain Jewish News
