Jack Abramoff '81 was a good Brandeis Jewish boy. And now, in the middle of one of the biggest government scandals of all time, he frequently brings up how devoted he is to his faith during interviews. And many of his claims seem to be true.The once ultrapowerful Washington superlobbyist-now under fire for fleecing Native American tribes out of millions of dollars, as well as a government corruption scandal in which federal prosecutors have already filed over 2,275 indictments-lives in a house that cost just slightly over $1 million, according to Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. This isn't cheap, but it barely stacks up to the money he donated to Jewish causes. He has funded several Jewish schools, including the Torah School of Greater Washington and Eshkol Academy, backed two money-losing kosher restaurants, and gave private gifts to many Jewish causes, according to the Jewish Journal.

Abramoff has been quoted in the Jewish Journal that he gave away everything and "was the softest touch in town." This seems a far cry from the fraudulent thug we all know him to be.

Not that long ago, a similar tactic worked in defense of a corporate executive accused of a multibillion-dollar fraud, in which he was estimated to have personally taken around $300 million. Richard Scrushy was the CEO of Healthsouth, a healthcare company that went under in 2003.

But Richard Scrushy was a religious man.

Healthsouth is based in Birmingham, Ala., both where Scrushy lived and where the trial was held. He was a member of the local blue-collar evangelical church, paid for a morning prayer show frequented by black ministers, held prayer groups during the trial, and often appeared publicly with his religious mentor.

Scrushy donated a lot of money to his religious causes, and as a result likely managed to escape jailtime for a fraud in which he obviously had a hand. Can this work for Jack Abramoff, Super Jew and Brandeis alumnus?

The answer, of course, is absolutely not. Scrushy didn't deserve to get off to begin with, and it's a mockery of our legal system that he did. Also, Scrushy was a Christian on Christian-friendly territory.

Abramoff, on the other hand, is presently confirming the deepest fears and hatred of all anti-Semites. In his supposed quest to fund Jewish causes, he has become the Jew controlling the political landscape with money from behind the scenes. These are the fears and suspicions that underlie the beliefs of radical Islam, neo-Nazis and, unfortunately, of more of the world then we would like to think.

The more Abramoff invokes his Judaism, the more he hurts the Jewish people. It's like the guy who killed Jesus proudly proclaiming that he gave to his local synagogue. But even beyond the peddling of Jewish influence, the idea of invoking religion as a way to appear innocent is viscerally disgusting.

Being a religious man, no matter the religion, does not make a good man. Being a good man is the only thing that makes a good man, religious or not. And those who invoke their religion as a testimony to their innocence in fact degrade their religion as a whole.

Being religious does not make a criminal innocent; rather, religious wrongdoers expose the fact that highly religious people are not necessarily good. Scrushy and Abramoff are not vindicated because of their religion. Instead, observers may come to believe that Christianity and Judaism are lesser religions, if somebody so immersed in the ceremonies of the religion can still be such a genuinely bad person.

The Abramoff trial will likely bring about positive results, as far as the government is concerned. The trial will bring down several dirty politicians-many of whom I've wanted to see fry for years-and will help clean up lobbying laws to some extent. But there is likely to be a lasting negative effect for the Jewish people.

The more the world knows about how Jewish Abramoff is, the more the world will continue to hate Jews. Or maybe, if so few people on the supposedly informed and intelligent Brandeis campus are even aware of his crimes, as shown by a recent poll, international ignorance could truly be bliss.