Bernie, Bernie, Bernie—what are we going to do with an uber-gonif like you?

Well, Mr. Madoff, Graeme Warring of ModelWorks is hoping that we’re willing to hand over the low, low price of $99.95 to whack you good. And then again.

That’s the cost of his company’s new “Smash-Me Bernie” doll, according to the New York Daily News. It features Bernie’s face on a body with a red-suit, devilish pitchfork in hand. It even comes with a golden hammer that allows you to get to work.

You remember Bernie: He’s the shmoe (yes, I’m being nice in the interest of working for a family newspaper) arrested Dec. 11, 2008, for defrauding investors out of a cool $50 billion. He particularly targeted fellow Jews and their charities, including the likes of Steven Spielberg, Elie Wiesel, Hadassah, Yeshiva University and many others.

And while the price is high, if you were one of the gazillionaires who lost big bucks with the Waldo of Wall Street, it just might be worth it. (Because if you already lost a few million, really, what’s a C-note to you?)

Sounds like a great gift for Jewish preschools to teach them what happens to people who lie.

Here’s the worst part for American Jews about Israel’s national elections last week – not many people here seemed to care.

Rather than lament the fact and offer excuses about how we’re all so busy, we need to figure what can be done about it. That’s because an American Jewry that pulls away from Israel hurts both itself and the State of Israel.

The Taglit-Birthright Israel trip CLICK HERE is a great start, but the follow up with its participants has basically made it only half an investment. The free 10-day trip to Israel for young adults age 18-26 (who have never been to Israel before on a “peer organized trip” – and yes, there’s cheating, as I learned from staffing a trip in 2002) – is a fantastic experience. In fact, well more than 100,000 people have already gone on the trip from around the world (but mostly from the United States).

The problem is that when the young adults come home, few of them plug into the Jewish community. That means that either they don’t like what we offer or we need much more creative approaches than we old people currently offer them. More likely it’s a combination.

I know those on college campus might get a call and a bunch of e-mails inviting them to a speaker or breakfast. But the deal should be that there is mandatory programming before going and after returning from the trip. What if you don’t attend? Simple: You have to pay the bill for the trip, which these days is probably more than $3,000. Hard to collect? Well, maybe we should ask them to pay $500 or so into an escrow account before going, and then return it with a gift of a discount on an El Al flight when they fulfill their obligations.

Too heavy a price to induce people to go? Not if you’ve ever hear the expression “there’s no free lunch.”

At least then maybe they’ll be able to figure out who wants to be Israel’s prime minister and why it should matter.

A note on Israel’s inconclusive elections on Tuesday, Feb. 10, in which Tzippy Livni’s centrist Kadima gained 28 seats and Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s center-right gained 27 seats. Both are far short of reaching a 61-seat majority in the Knesset, which has prompted Israel’s usual noxious backroom deals for support.

Well, I’m betting on the odds that Bibi gets the tap from Israeli President Shimon Peres next Wednesday to form a government, which leads to Livni’s decrying of “denial of the people’s desires.” Guess what Tzippy? The people didn’t really want you or Bibi. After all, both of you gained only around a whopping 25 percent of the electorate.

Bibi’s the likely next boss because his overall right and center-right won more than Tzippy’s left and center-left.

I’m hoping that as Prime Minister Bibi will draw in another secular party in addition to the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu (15 seats). Ehud Barak of the center-left Labor (13 seats), says he won’t join. But frankly, he needs to be kicked out as head of the party (which his leadership style has basically destroyed) and then the party needs to enter the government. The Sephardi Orthodox Shas (11seat) will be chomping at the bit to get in, which will enable it to fund its always financially tottering school system. It would be fantastic if a chunk of Kadima went into the coalition. Even Tzippy is now saying – defying what she said during the campaign – that she might be game. That would mean she’d stay on as Foreign Minister, which could slow down any right-wing tendencies of Bibi’s government.

This would all give Bibi give him room to maneuver around the threat of a right-wing party pulling down his government, which is what happened in 1999. Here’s to hoping that Bibi is a much more effective manager than he was in that top job from 1996-99. I do think his experience as Foreign Minister, Finance Minister and opposition leader since then has seasoned him – and he needed it.

Now that our state’s former lieutenant governor is head of the Republican Party, what will it mean for outreach to Jews?

Not much … and here’s why.

If one looks at the numbers of American Jewry – always much more reliable than the anecdotal evidence many prefer –Jewish voters in this country have not moved in the past few decades from their solid Democratic base. The American Jewish Committee’s annual survey of American Jewish opinion makes this clear – despite the fact that around one-third of the Jews claim themselves as Independents. The fact is, the vast majority of that group votes Democrat in presidential elections. In fact, around 78 percent of Jews did so in this past election.

As that’s been happening, the Republicans have gone full press on courting Jews on their staunch pro-Israel support. Still, for most American Jews that’s obviously not been enough. For a national perspective, check out what my friend James. D. Besser just wrote in the New York Jewish Week: CLICK HERE

The Republicans, of course, do have a majority of Orthodox Jews, but that segment of our community only constitutes about 10-15 percent of U.S. Jewry (depending on what survey you want to use).

Meanwhile, what did Mr. Steele’s tenure as an elected official in Maryland show us? For starters he is an extremely likeable and personable. Like his boss, now former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., Mr. Steele had excellent relationships with Jewish leaders in the state.

That had a lot more to do with personality than policies. In fact, Mr. Steele headed the state’s first faith-based office, which intended to mirror President George W. Bush’s controversial effort on the national level. But in Maryland this did not account for much and the organized Jewish community’s questions were never answered: Who defines a religion? Should the Nation of Islam get funds? What about Jews for Jesus? And why – pray tell – were existing laws that enabled groups such as the Catholic Charities and the Jewish Family Services to get state funds not sufficient? Why drop the safeguards on hiring and practice in these operations?

Then came the big gaffe. When speaking to the Baltimore Jewish Council in February 2006 – amidst his failed U.S. Senate run against now Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Mr. Steele compared embryonic stem cell research to the Holocaust. Coming from a former Catholic seminarian, the remark made sense (despite my staunch disagreement with it). Coming from a politician, it was a gargantuan mistake. Mr. Steele correctly took a public beating over it. Jewish leaders accepted his subsequent apology; Jewish voters have long memories.

Nationally, Mr. Steele’s job in part is to open the GOP to groups that have in the past rejected its outreach – particularly Jews (with their prodigious fund-raising skills) and African Americans, whose loyalty the Democratic Party now seems to have a lock box on for the next eight years.

Mr. Steele, however, has charm and savvy. He’s currently playing the role of a moderate – just as Howard Dean successfully did from the other side of the aisle for the past four years. He’s generally known here as a conservative GOPer. Will the new Michael Steele’s work make a difference with Jews? At the moment, the odds of that are as likely as George Mitchell bragging at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem about how in the morning he dedicated a Koran in Yassir Arafat’s memory.