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While calling for institutional changes is usually the chosen response to revelations of widespread misbehavior, a wide array of experts are examining the cultural elements of the recent corruption bust involving some area Jewish communities, as well as questioning the ethical red lines regarding human organ transactions.

The two cultural issues involved here are: the implications of New Jersey's "culture of corruption" and its apparent encroachment into the Jewish community, and how the insularity of a religious community affects its interactions with the "outside" world.

On the latter, religious communities that function with a high degree of insularity yet attempt to influence politics as a bloc is a relic that has mostly faded around the country, yet been preserved in New Jersey, according to Dr. Mark Silk.

"New Jersey's a place where ethno-religious communities are more noticeable in terms of political involvement of those communities than other places I know," Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, told The Jewish State. "It seems to be sort of extended from the old days of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans into some of the newer ethno-religious groups. And it says something about the coherence of ethno-religious communities that are ongoing in parts of New Jersey."

Insularity has its own risks

Silk is the founding editor of Religion in the News and author of "Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II". He said one of the dangers for such a community is a tendency to view the rest of the world through an "us versus them" prism.

He said he doesn't know if that's the case with the Deal Syrian Jewish community, but such communities can fall into a trap wherein they elevate their own rules over those of the outside community instead of observing the two in tandem.

"One of the situations that small, tight, insular groups can put themselves in -- because they make their own decisions, they have their own theology, their own ideology, whatever -- is that they don't feel part of the larger community," Silk said. "That's part of the whole idea. They are a people apart, they understand themselves to be that and they may feel that the rest of the world is something there for them to exploit."

Silk and Harvard professor Dr. Ruth Wisse made clear that the community's observant nature does not alone lend itself to corruption, but neither does it provide an impenetrable firewall.

"I'm afraid that corruption is not ethnic- or religious-group specific, as witness the still politically influential Congressman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)," Wisse said, indicating that corruption isn't considered intolerable by the political class -- an example of which is Rangel's continued chairmanship of the powerful House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, which generates tax policy, despite his admission of tax fraud.

Peter T. Kilborn provides one example of an insular community that has nothing to do with religion in his new book, "Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class". The book is about "Relos," or Americans who relocate often for work, and end up living in enclaves of like-minded transients.

Here's how Kilborn described it to The Jewish State: "A company, say Coca-Cola, opens a major regional office in Dallas and hires or promotes people to work there. These employees look for housing somewhere near the office. They tend to look for new housing and for housing that suits their needs. Builders and developers respond to those needs and put up homes suitable for Relos."

It becomes, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the town begins to attract other Relos by catering to them. Kilborn said they are not as insular as, say, an Amish community, nor are they bound by the same ethnic ties as the Syrian Jewish community, but do create communities in their image.

"The Relos' community or subdivision becomes insular because Relos live apart from the more settled community," Kilborn said. "They don't invest themselves in the broader community because they know they will be leaving soon. They don't participate in community causes, like building a museum, because they know they won't be there when it opens."

Kilborn's research shows the challenges that face a community and its exclusive sub-community when the latter is removed from general municipal life.

A Jersey cultural predisposition to corruption?

Those who have monitored the state's political behavior note the lack of surprise that something like this took place in New Jersey -- and involved the state's elected officials. Paul Mulshine, a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger, said the identity of the FBI's cooperating witness -- disgraced real estate developer Solomon Dwek -- reveals the arrogance of many officials.

"If you had Googled [Dwek's] name, you would have found stories from our paper and the Asbury Park Press that he had been arrested by the Feds in 2006, but that those charges had not been resolved, and I think even if you were a crook you would say: Wait a minute, the Feds always get their man, so far this guy hasn't been convicted, maybe he flipped," Mulshine said. "I just found it amazing that all these people just took this guy at face value."

Law enforcement officials quoted Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, who was arrested as part of the sting for taking bribes, as describing his recent electoral chances thus: "I could get indicted and still get 85-95 percent of those populations."

Mulshine cited former Newark mayor and convicted felon Sharpe James as precedent for Cammarano's remark.

"I think the mayor of Hoboken was right," Mulshine said. "It doesn't matter what urban politicians do, they still get the Democratic vote."

That expectation for corruption is built into the state's fiscal infrastructure, according to Eileen Norcross. Norcross, a senior research fellow with the Social Change Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, is an alumnus of Rutgers University. She said the way municipal budgets are set in New Jersey -- with most of the money coming from the statehouse in the form of various aid programs -- leaves local residents and officials with little control over the process.

"On a local level, how much money is going to schools that's actually raised by the federal, the state, the local level is clouded, so people aren't quite clear on where the money is coming from and what it's being spent on," Norcross told The Jewish State. "So over years, it's called 'fiscal illusion,' and I think you have that operating in New Jersey, where it's not clear where the revenue is coming from, where it's going, and who's actually being taxed and what amount. So there is a lack of transparency right there."

Norcross also alluded to one way the state's "culture of corruption" could bleed into a community like the Deal Syrian enclave, where the community isn't corrupt, but some members are tempted into the greater system of corruption that New Jersey seems to tolerate.

"I think that's an example of venal versus systemic corruption, where some people are tempted by corruption versus it being a systemic problem for a particular community of people," Norcross explained. "Whereas the systemic problem, I think, in New Jersey has to do with the temptation of anyone in that state."

Norcross said the lack of transparency in government makes residents uneasy and frustrated, and that a case like this may actually galvanize a movement toward change. But, she added, it would be an uphill battle.

The point, Norcross said, is that "the rules over which these elected officials operate don't constrain them."

Mulshine added that overregulation is a problem, too. He said there are so many environmental regulations that for a development to be approved in a timely manner, government officials will take bribes and believe they're actually doing the right thing.

"So people generally feel 'this is a bad regulation, I need to get rid of this red tape'," Mulshine said. "And in the case of the Ocean County assemblyman, [Daniel] Van Pelt, he actually said 'I would do this anyway.' And I think that he probably had himself convinced he would do it anyway. And he probably would have done it anyway. But that doesn't justify taking $10,000 in an envelope."

Should the organ selling have been legal?

Whether the money laundering and bribe taking aspect of the case spurs any change, some expressed hope that the organ trafficker's story will.

According to the FBI complaint, Brooklyn resident Levy Izhak Rosenbaum attempted to broker the sale of a human kidney for a price of $160,000. That act is illegal under the federal National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 -- though Rabbi Asher Meir, of the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem, told The Jewish State there should be a legal framework to allow it.

"After many years of studying the ethical and legal debate on organ selling, I have come to the conclusion that it is unconscionable to deny desperately ill people their only opportunity for a normal life, and equally unconscionable to deny donors fair recompense for their sacrifice," Meir said. "Therefore, I favor legalization and regulation of the sale of non-vital organs," including a single kidney, blood, and ovaries.

Meir stressed that he does not advocate or excuse Rosenbaum's alleged actions, because they would be illegal under American law. Additionally, Meir favors a law that strictly enforces informed consent.

"Donors should be given sufficient time and information to make an informed decision; they need to be fully aware of the entire payment schedule (how much the recipient pays for the organ, how much goes to the donor and how much to other parties); and agreement to donate should be revocable, meaning that contracts to donate an organ should not be enforceable," Meir said.

When Dr. Sally Satel needed a kidney several years ago, she might have considered doing business with Rosenbaum, Satel told The Jewish State in a phone interview the day Rosenbaum was arrested.

"In big cities, people have almost as good a chance of dying on dialysis as they do of getting a transplant," Satel said. "I mean to say they have about a 50/50 chance, and if they're over 60 they are often more likely to die. It is an avertable tragedy if we could only make donor compensation legal and transparent, so people don't have to resort to black markets and corruption."

Satel, author of "When Altruism Isn't Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors," said she finds the hand-wringing over the shortage of available organs frustrating, especially when there is something that can be done.

"Spreading the misery around is not the solution; getting more organs is," Satel said.

Satel said she thinks certain such transactions might already be legal, if done correctly. That is, she believes the law doesn't prevent states from offering tax credits to a potential donor who then gives an organ to another person, directly. The only difference in the transaction, she said, is that the state would be the payer instead of the organ recipient.

Unfortunately, she said, the usual reaction to a story like this is for the authorities to crack down on organ selling, instead of looking for a solution to the organ shortage.

"This isn't the disease, this is a symptom," Satel said, referring to the organ trafficking charges. "The disease is the shortage."