Guarding “all four corners of Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues” in Manhattan, Alicia Oltuski writes, are “two colossal diamond-shaped lamps built atop giant metallic stanchions.” They announce to all who pass by that this is the “most important quarter” of what is known as the jewelry district or the diamond district of New York, arguably the most important market in the world for the trade in “Precious Objects,” as Oltuski calls them in the title of this engaging and informative book.
Oltuski is the daughter and granddaughter of diamond merchants. She has chosen a career in writing rather than in gems, but she is understandably fascinated by the trade that has supported her family for more than half a century, and this book is the result. It is, as its subtitle indicates, at once an account of the diamond business, a portrait of the tiny, insular world in which it is conducted, and a family memoir. There are other, vastly more encyclopedic histories of diamonds — notable among them Edward J. Epstein’s “The Diamond Invention” (1982) and Stefan Kanfer’s “The Last Empire: De Beers, Diamonds and the World” (1993) — but I am unaware of a book that so intimately captures the strange and strangely beguiling place in which they are bought and sold.
On 47th Street, if not in all the world’s other diamond markets, the dominant presence is that of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The pedestrian feels, stepping off 5th or 6th Avenue onto 47th Street, as if he or she has entered another planet, if not indeed another millennium:
“The outer layers of their outfits are black and the inner, white. Black hats, black shoes, and long black coats. White shirts, white socks, and white tallis cloths, whose fringes sometimes peek out from beneath their jackets. Their sideburns are long, uncut. They walk quickly along the crowded street, as though they exist in a separate plane of reality, away from Manhattan’s busy throngs, stopping only to chat about a diamond or to glance into the window of an exchange. Some walk with their heads down and eyes averted, to keep from looking at women who might be scantily clothed, their hands behind their backs so that they won’t brush against one. They are observant of touch, guarding their flesh from contact with a member of the opposite sex. Once, at a jewelry show, a pin of my father’s caught the eye of a Hasidic woman. She was there with her husband. My father wanted to give her the pin so she could try it on, but she wouldn’t take it. At least not directly from him. He had to hand it to her husband, who passed it on to his wife.”
The “ancient customs of Judaism run deeply through the diamond business,” observed by Jews and non-Jews alike. “When two people say Mazal, short for Mazal und brucha — ‘luck and blessing’ in Yiddish — the stone has transferred possession, no matter who is physically holding the gem or what other offers the seller gets.” The Jewish connection dates back to “medieval times,” drawing upon “a history of hiding, persecution, and desperate getaways.” In the Europe of the Dark Ages, “Jews were not allowed to own land, so instead, they put their funds into diamonds — the most precious of gems. . . . Over the ages, as Jews were linked with the diamond trade, Judaism became a worldwide business system in addition to a religion. Rabbis were not just spiritual guides but international deal enforcers,” and:
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