Torah Torah Torah

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother's favorite films. She loved history and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of the them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific. The 1970 film flopped at the box office. Hippies didn't want to see a war movie, but I went with my mother and father. She cried at the sinking of the Arizona. My father had joined the Army Air Force that next January in 1942 much like many young Americans volunteered for the armed forces after the 9/11 attacks.

"The title TORA TORA TORA was manipulated into TORAH TORAH TORAH for episodes of NYPD BLUE and MAGNUM P.I. This last week the power of the Torah was exalted by a very religious friend from Eastern Parkway. Rondell said proudly, "The Torah is one of the most important school books in Korea. Its truth is taught to many of the young."

"The Torah?" The five books of Moses form the backbone of Hassidic tradition. Christian accept the Pentateuch into their Old Testament and the Muslims regarded the ancient text to be the words of Allah. Korea was on the other side of the world. "What's the Torah have to do with Korea?"

"The Korean ambassador told Israeli TV that Talmud study is a mandatory part of the country’s school curriculum and almost every home in South Korea boasts a Korean version of the Talmud, and mothers commonly teach it to their children, who call it the "Light of Knowledge." He appreciates the value of Jewish knowledge. Koreans love education.

"I know many Koreans are Christian. I had several baptized in my youth." Three to be exact. I had paid the nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills $45 to name the three orphans under missionary care. "They are also prone to Evangelism."

"Evengelism?" Rondell was unfamiliar with Christian subsects.

"Born-Again Christians."

At the mention of these words my co-worker turned her head. Ava is from Brazil. She believes in the God of the Only Faith. Ava prays for my soul, for I am a devout non-believer.

"Yes, they are the ones who back Israel 100%, for without Israel there can be no Apocalypse, which will bring back the Messiah to battle the forces of Satan. Ava, do you have a Torah in your house?"

"Yes, it's called the Book of Light." Ava is a good mother. We are friends. She went back to work on her baby's photos. She has a church event coming this Easter weekend.

"Thanks." I respect her faith. In this country the Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and from religion. "The Talmud gets around and so does the Koran."

"Not according to the Korean Ambassador. He says no Koreans read it, because it's a book of Islam."

"That may be true." I have traveled through Korea's main airport on my many trips to Thailand. I have seen few Muslims in Inchoen Airport. No Jews either, but then you don't have to like pastrami to be Jewish. Rondell was ecstatic to have stumped me on this issue and I told him, "I'll have to get back to you."

"You do that."

"In the meanwhile have a good sedar."

We hugged as men equal in love of the world and I shouted TORAH TORAH TORAH after him. He pumped his fist in the air. I love Passover. It's a Jewish holiday and I don'tahve to go to work at the diamond exchange tomorrow.

Sometimes even a cruel god gets to be kind.

Nearly ten years ago, the Korea Times reported: “Interestingly, there are at least two different books currently sitting on Korean best-seller shelves that purport to explain the Jewish Talmud. The popularity of these books initially came as a surprise. But Koreans aren’t converting to Judaism. They read those books because Jews have gained a reputation for hard work and success, two things Koreans relate to well.”

Reports of Korean schoolchildren reading the Talmud – or at least stories thereof – have also been known for several years. One American teacher in South Korea related that in 2005, his elementary school students told him that as children, they had all read the Talmud, which they called the "Light of Knowledge."

When asked if they had also read the Koran, they burst into laughter, saying, "Of course not, that’s the Muslim book.”

TORAH TORAH TORAH, but I prefer a good pastrami sandwich from Katz’ Deli.

Throw in a cream soda and I’m in heaven on earth.

MAKE NICE / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Manhattan’s Diamond District has a reputation for being a closed community. 99% of those working on 47th Street are of Jewish heritage and many of the gem dealers are connected by blood or marriage. On the surface the industry thrives due to the benefits of this homogeneity, but the mishpocha on the Street suffer the same chasms of enmity as any families.

Our firm showed smiling faces to our customers and rivals, since my boss, Manny, and his son, Richie Boy, followed the Corleone tradition of never laundering family troubles in public and basing their discretion on THE GODFATHER was better than adopting the murderous plot-line of GOODFELLAS.

For the most part our lips were sealed by the Jewish version of omerta, but anyone was fair game for Manny’s barbs. The Brownsville native had fought his way up through the ranks and at 82 he remembered every slight and unpaid bill to the penny. The two of us sat facing each other. He hated my talking on the phone and I resented his eavesdropping on my conversations, but at the end of the day the two of us often buried our differences with a drink in Grand Central Terminal. The bars were crowded with commuting women and manny had a good eye for the beauty of women as well as diamonds.

One morning in summer of 2010 I sold a walk-in customer a diamond for $55,000. The architect from Chicago had to celebrate a 25th wedding anniversary in a week. The deal was consummated in less than thirty minutes.

“Well done.” Richie Boy loved sales. He had bills to pay.

“All part of a day’s work.” A quick sale was a good way to start off the day.

“Wham-blam, thank you, ma’am.” Richie Boy handed the credit card and sales slips to his father.

“It’s always easy, when the customer needs what you have.” Manny stood up from his desk with difficulty. A bad hip didn’t prevent the eighty-two year-old from coming to work.

“And even easier when the customer wants what you have.” I calculated my commish. It covered a flight to Thailand. I hadn’t seen my kids in three months. “He was a good guy.”

“Don’t fool yourself. Everyone is a piece of shit.” Manny’s low esteem of humanity was based on a seemingly never-ending series of disappointments in mankind.

“Not everyone.” Richie Boy had inherited many of Manny’s traits, but his cynical optimism had been inherited from his elegant mother. They shared the same sapphire blue eyes.

“Everyone is a piece of shit.” Manny had a long list of POSs or ‘pieces of shit’. Richie Boy and me, his longtime employee, topped the chart. Neither of us came to work on time and our tardiness was the least of our faults in his book.

“Great, I’ll call the customer and tell him that I won’t sell the diamond to him, since he’s a piece of shit.” I grabbed the sales slip and picked up the phone. The customer’s number was on the top of the bill.

“Save the smoke and mirrors for your friends.” Manny seized the bill and examined the sales’ paperwork to add up the cost of the diamond, the ring, and the setting of the stone. The numbers weren’t to his liking. “Why didn’t you get more money?”

“Leave him alone. He did good.” Richie Boy was getting a headache. We had out drinking with a hedge fund investor last night. The billionaire was looking for a red diamond. The price per carat was in the millions.

“He did his job that’s all and why? Because he wants money.” Manny wasn’t wrong.

“Everyone wants money. That’s why we work.”

“Not Manny.” Richie sat at his desk. “He works to make us miserable.”

“My two heroes.” Manny did love to make us miserable. The fighting brought his blood to a boil and that was a good thing for a man his age.

“I’m going out for a cup of coffee.” I had heard enough of this conversation to know its destination and asked Manny, “You want one?”

“Here.” Manny’s hand fumbled into his pocket.

“I don’t need your money.” The twenty years of supporting me and mine granted Manny a special dispensation from having to pay for his own coffee.

I walked outside and took a deep breath.

Inside the exchange Richie Boy and Manny were squared off toe-to-toe. Sometimes I thought that the bickering was an act, but this morning they were going at it and I walked next door to the Russian coffee shop.

Several dealers were standing in the foyer. I said hello to Abel. The young Hassidic broker and I had sold several diamonds over the last two years. He was a good man in my books. We always made money together and a year ago when Manny lost a carat diamond memoed from Abel, the broker had knocked $500 off the price. Manny had called him a piece of shit for that generous gesture.

I never mentioned the insult to Abel.

Manny was man enough to tell people they were piece of shit to their face.

“How goes it?”

“Not bad.” I told him about the sale. Abel congratulated my luck and then said, “Whose stone?”

“None of your business.” Abel had his hand in every pot.

“Okay.” He appeared hurt by my rebuke, but in this business if a diamond broker commented in open conversation about a sale, then the information would be common knowledge from 5th Avenue to Avenue of the Americas by day’s end, albeit filtered through a myriad of mouths to be malformed into a miscarriage of the truth.

“What do you think about Farrid?” Abel had dealings with every ethnic group on the street. Countries and nationalities had no borders when money was the root of all life.

“Richie Boy’s old partner from the retail store on 5th Avenue?” I clenched my right hand into a fist.

“The Persian.” Everyone in the Diamond District called Iranian Jews ‘Persians’ and the entire tribe had colonized the Long island suburb of Great Neck.

“You want me to say good for him?” Our business depended on trust.

“He wants a stone from me.”

“Better you talk to Richie Boy about that.” I had sold a million-dollar ruby for Farrid and Richie Boy in 2009. The Persian had shorted $2000 on my commish and then insinuated that I had come close to fucking up the sale.

The closer to nothing that I said about him the better.

“Are you saying he’s no good?” Abel considered me a ‘sheygutz’ which for a Hassid was one step less pejorative than a goy and a sheygutz had a different perspective of the business than a G.

“I’m not saying nothing. It’s not my place.” Farrid had twice bounced this commission check. He had been hit hard by Bernie Madoff. He wasn’t out of the woods yet either. Like all Persians he had a big family.

“Thanks. I owe you a coffee.”

“I didn’t say nothing.” I paid for my coffee.

“And thanks for that.”

I returned to the exchange. Richie Boy was on the phone with his wife. Manny was fiddling with the electrical connection to his adding machine. It dated back to 1982. He raised his head and asked, “Where’s my coffee?”

“I forgot it.”

“Everyone thinks about themselves.”

I let it go. This was 2010. Jobs weren’t easy to hold and even harder to get for a man my age. Later and the rest of the morning passed without incident.

A little past noon Richie Boy came over to my desk.

“Farrid just called me.”

“And?” I had a good idea what was coming.

“He said you told Abel not to give him a stone.”

“Abel asked me about him and I said it wasn’t my place to comment on him.” I was telling the truth.

“Farrid says you said bad for him.”

“I said nothing. He can think whatever he wants.” I was hot enough to walk over to Farrid’s office and do something crazy.

“I do business with him.” Richie Boy wasn’t dropping the subject.

“I never will.” I hadn’t spoken with him in two years.

“You made money from that deal.”

“Yes, I did and he screw me out of two grand.” It was money out of the mouths of my children. “I’ll never say bad about him to anyone else, but you can tell him, if he’s ever in a room alone, he has a minute to leave it.”

“And what?” Richie boy wanted me to paint the entire picture.

“You know me a long time.” We had met at Hurrah, a punk disco on West 62nd Street. His uncle had been an off-duty cop working as security. Sam had seen me at my worst and Richie Boy had witnessed my breaking a drug dealer’s nose with a rolled-up GQ magazine for his calling me an asshole. The double-issue had a nice weight to it. “I’ll be a nice guy. If Farrid is with his family, then I’ll leave wherever they are without a problem. But he is never to say hello to me or expect me to say good for him. He’s a piece of shit.”

“See, you feel the same way as me.” Manny was near-deaf, but the old man could hear whatever he wanted to hear. “I know what Farrid did to you. He screwed with your family. He’s a piece of shit.”

“You’re right.” I usually hated when Manny proved that he was right, since he was usually right.

“Thanks for taking my side.”

“You’re family. But best to avoid any trouble. There’s no money in it.” Manny came from Brownsville, Mike Tyson’s old neighborhood. No one these days knew how tough it was there back when Manny was young.

“And if there’s no money in it, then why do anything, right?”

“That’s the way I think.”

“Okay.” I was leaving for Thailand to see my kids, so I said to Manny, “I’m going to be cool. I won’t speak to the piece of shit. He won’t get a fork in the eye. End of story. Of course he could pay me the $2000. Then I’ll be real nice.”

“Not a chance of that happening.” Manny was a good judge of bad character.

I thought that was the end of it, except that afternoon Farrid saw me on the street and I blanked him like a dog.

For the next few days the Persian telephoned our office and I never answered the phone. Finally Manny fielded the call. He would speak to anyone. I told him thanks.

Some people can leave well enough alone and the next morning Richie Boy tapped me on the shoulder with a pen, “I want you to be good to Farrid. I make money with him.”

“Really?” I knocked away the pen. No matter how Richie Boy painted his partner, Farrid was still a donkey in my eyes. Manny rose from his desk. Everyone in the exchange was watching us. Manny pulled us together.

“When I was a boy, there was a kid who didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. Back then in Brownsville we had gangs. Not like now, but we were tough.” Murder Incorporated started in Brownsville. Mike Tyson grew up in that neighborhood. Its motto was ‘never ran, never will. “This black boy challenged me to a fight after school. He showed up with twenty friends. I had about thirty. I could tell he was carrying a knife. I had a lead pipe. We stepped away from our friends and I said, “You wanna fight, then both of us will get real hurt. I don’t see that you wanna go to the hospital and neither do I, but if we gotta go then we gotta go at it.” The black boy shrugged and shook my hand. There was no gain in us fighting. Same as there’s no gain in your fucking with Farrid. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so.”

“You’re no wrong.”

‘So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll play nice.” I’d be out of there in less than a month. Being nice wouldn’t kill me.

“Good.” Richie Boy hated fights. He was no starker, which meant tough guy in Yiddish.

As his son sat at his desk, Manny said, “At my age and your age fighting isn’t an option. Making money from someone is the best revenge.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I liked Manny. The old man didn’t take shit. People like him were hard to find. People like Richie Boy’s partner were everywhere. Farrid was lucky that I was leaving town, especially since having to make nice to a piece of shit was not in my job description.

Unlike Richie Boy I also was a starker and Manny liked his martinis with two olives. So did I.

BET ON CRAZY 6 / The Color of the 4Cs by Peter Nolan Smith

The last week of February I was hurrying down the sidewalk on West 47th Street. My watch read 9:35. I was late for the third time this week and it was only Wednesday. Lenny the bum was standing in front of Berger's Deli. His lightly-clothed body was steaming in the sub-zero temperature. Fat people generate a lot of heat.

"Can you give a little?" Lenny said to a passing Hassidim diamond dealer and then pointed a quivering finger. “There’s the goy who gave me a dollar yesterday. The good goy, Damien.”

“His name isn’t Damien___” The dealer recognized me at Manny's store.

“I like the name Damien fine.” I couldn’t resist Lenny's utter helplessness. "You want a bagel?”

“From Berger? That’s not kosher.”

“Just what the world has been waiting for, a finicky bum,” The Hassidim laughed, but Lenny cringed with hurt and shambled off with a mutter. “I’m not finicky, just don’t eat tref. See you, Damien.”

Berger’s was definitely kosher, though not dairy glatt, and I crossed the street. It was 9:38. Manny was in the front window, tapping his watch. I entered the exchange and Manny said, "Every day you're late. Two minutes, five minutes, fifteen minutes. Why can't you get here on time?"

"I try." I got up at 8. Somehow 90 minutes weren't enough time to get from East 10th Street to Midtown. "I’ve taken the N train, the L, the 4. None of them are faster."

"So leave a little earlier."

"Okay." I took off my leather coat and hung it over my chair. Richie Boy and Domingo were running late too. Nothing really happened on the street until lunch.

"Okay what? Okay you'll be on time?" Manny handed me a tray from the safe. The metal box contained the heavy goods for the front window. Diamond necklaces and engagement rings.

"Manny, when you going to teach me about diamonds?" I needed to change the subject

"What's there to teach?" Manny had little time for on-the-job training. "You do what I tell you and you can't go wrong."

"Yeah, but here are two 3-carat diamonds." I held up two engagement rings in 14k gold; a marquise and round stone. "Both the same size, color, and clarity, but they don't cost the same."

"I told you about the 4Cs." Manny sighed with exasperation. He hated wasting any time from his beloved paperwork.

"Carat, color, clarity, and cut." These 4Cs determined the price of a diamond. "Your lesson lasted three minutes."

"What you expect to know everything in a week? A month? A year?" Manny motioned to set out the goods faster.

"No, I listen to what you tell customers and you inevitably tell them every stone is a G VS, unless it has a certificate from the GIA."

"I hate the GIA." Manny had no confidence in the Gemmological Institute of America, having sent several stones for certification only to have them come back a lesser grade than his original estimation. "Upstarts."

"They've been around since 1931."

"And I've been around since 1925." Manny was a little younger than my father. "So I beat them. They think that they're the be all and end all of diamonds. We never sold those stones on the Bowery. Only when my hero and your friend, Richie Boy, moved me up here did I have to deal with GIA stones and that 4Cs crap."

"It's not crap." Richie Boy lifted the counter top. The braces had come off his legs, so he was able to wear his suits again. Armani, Zegna, Calvin Klein. I had inherited several hand-me-downs. They were little small on me, but better than a 20 year-old suit from Jaeger.

"It's crap. The G comes into the store for a 1-carat stone. He doesn't know a D color from a J, but he knows how much he has in his pocket. He has $3000. You tell him the stone is G VS. He has $4000. You tell him G VS. He has $2000. You tell him G VS, because that's what he wants. A white clean stone. Nice and easy."

"Except if he has $10,000 in his pocket and he wants a 2-carat F SI stone. Then your formula gets shit-canned." Richie folded his cashmere coat and hung it behind the safe. "Manny, the GIA helps the customers and it helps us. Get used to it."

The telephones started ringing ending this discussion and my education. I put the two diamonds back in the trays and filled the window with rings, necklaces, tennis bracelets, pins, pearls, chokers, and antiques.

"Manny's nervous enough to make a statue twitch." Richie Boy hobbled to my side. "Do us a favor and don't wind him up."

"All I asked was about the difference in diamond prices."

"It took Manny 50 years to know what he knows and doesn't know. Leave him alone. If you want to learn about diamonds, just keep your ears open. In the meanwhile, run this setting up to Eenon to pick out 20 stones. G SI. Five pointers. Got it."

"And afterwards the stones will be G VS?" 100 points made up a carat, so five pointers were 1/20th of a carat.

"It's what the 'G's want." All customers were 'G's, not because they were goyim like myself, but they always asked for a G color stone like Manny said. I left the store and headed down the street to the front of a 9-story building. Lenny was in front mumbling about deBeers. His audience consisted of errant snowflakes, as everyone rushed about on their chores. He was too drunk to notice my entering the building and I got in a packed elevator, pressing the button for the 8th floor.

A skinny Hassidic setter hadn't bathed since the Deluge of Noah. I breathed through my mouth until the 8th floor. Eenon's office was at the end of a bleak corridor. The walls were a weak lime green and the overhead neon lights fluttered at the end of a long life. Room 805 was magnetically locked and I rang the buzzer, then lifted my face to the CCTV. The door clicked open and I stepped in the waiting room. An old man face popped into the tiny window. Eenon’s father resembled a featherless chicken and I could hear him say, "The goy is here."

He opened the door and indicated that I should sit on a metal folding chair. The shabby room was decorated with battered desks on which weighing scales were lit by brilliant lamps. Eenon looked up from a parcel of small diamonds with a smile.

"Ach, it is the goy." Eenon was my age. We liked the same music. He liked calling me 'the goy', because there were so few gentiles working on 47th Street. "What does Manny want now?"

"20 five-pointers. G SI."

"He's willing to pay $550 per carat?" Eenon asked like he hadn't heard me right.

"I think so. What's the difference between $500 and $550?"

"A good question." Eenon usually had a little time to speak with me, probably because I was his only contact with the goyim. He reached over to the pile of loose stones with long-nosed tweezers. He placed two small stones on a folded piece of white paper. "The price is determined by the usual factors. Color, clarity, cut, and carat size. No matter what the size. Look at these two stones. Each one is a 20-pointer. Same cut and clarity and both are the same color. Different costs."

"And you can tell the difference?" They appeared to both be white to me.

"My father taught me the difference, although when he was learning they called the stones different colors. D was Jager. E and F were River. G and H were Wesselton. I-J were Top Silver, K-L were Top Cape and the rest to Z were designated as Cape to Yellow."

"Why you wasting your time telling 'the goy' this?" His father was seated at his desk, sorting tiny diamonds, each one a glitter under the electric light of his lamp.

"Because he asked a question."

"You know why they called Wesselton 'Wesselton' or Jager 'Jager'?" The old man pushed back his sleeve. A tattoo was burnt into his wrist, a concentration camp souvenir.

"No." Eenon answered with a grin.

"What's so funny? You think you're tricking an alte kakher into being the goy's teacher."

"No one said you were an old fart." Eenon was fluent in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. "I want him to know the right thing and not bullshit."

"Such language." His father tsked with the cluck of his tongue. "Wesselton was the name of a South African mine. The stones out of it were G-H in color, although some people called J Wessleton, but no one uses those terms anymore."

"Same with Jager?" Eenon was not through digging.

"Anymore questions are $1 dollar." The old man plucked a diamond from an envelope. Maybe a 90-pointer. Almost a carat. There was no mistaking the gin-clear color was a D. "Jager is the finest diamond color. Why they call it "Jager'?"

"The word means hunter in German." I had taken the language in high school.

"Jaeger." The old man's eyes narrowed. "Maybe you aren't such a stupid goy after all."

"Here are your stones?" Eenon gave me a paper parcel. He had written 20 stones = 1.04 and I signed a memo for the goods.

"When is your boss going to pay for these?"

"Wer wisst." Manny was a notorious slow payer.

"Who knows?" Eenon's father shook his head. "I like this goy more and more. Sie gesund."

"Thanks for the lesson." Eenon had never explained the difference between 500 per carat and 550 per carat diamonds, but Richie Boy likes to say, "Gimbel's told Macy's and now there is no more Macy's."

The best secrets are the ones you never tell.