A Harpe un a Shande

As I said: pious, personal relationships with God are not a guarantee of human decency.
That is true of all religions.
What are rabbis doing, of all people, laundering corruption money for a fee in Jersey?
WTF?
Many "pious" people use religion as a con. The aura of sanctity makes it easier for them to be immoral, because most people still believe that religion is an immediate and reliable indicator of virtue.
It is not.
It's like suicide bombers that dress like pregnant women. Nobody would suspect a pregnant woman of carrying a bomb. Same goes for these bozos. They reason that nobody would suspect a rabbi from laundering money.
Well, I would and I do. Just as I suspect televangelists from conning people and stealing money in the name of the Lord.

One can be moral and decent and upstanding without religion.
The more people realize this fact, the better.

Today, I heard a fascinating interview with Sacha Baron Cohen on NPR (thanks Joshua!) about how he does what he does. He was saying that in that remarkable scene in Borat at a fundamentalist church where they were trying to save him, they were crowding him and shaking his arms to make it look like he was in trance and instructing him to speak in tongues.

Religious con artists know that "there's a sucker born every minute".