Word: 47th
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...trading also involves flocks of individual entrepreneurs, who often make their main living by cutting stones for manufacturers. A typical diamond cutter last week sat in his office, high above 47th Street, and dealt with an elderly broker standing before him. The cutter examined a packet of raw stones with his loupe. He shook his head, wrapped the packet up and handed it back to the broker. The old man wearily placed it in his old leather pouch, held together with tape and rubber bands, and produced another packet. The two haggled for a moment in Yiddish and then...
...Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn. Others, similarly dressed, come pouring out of the subway entrance. Swiftly, the narrow, dirty street begins its daily transformation. Pale hands splay rainbows of gems across velvet cloths in store windows, magically making each an entrance to Ali Baba's cave. This is West 47th Street, a tiny world of its own that handles about half of the diamonds entering the U.S. Here brokers play middleman between American buyers and the supplying De Beers syndicate in London, and the deals amount to more than $2.5 billion worth of rare gems a year...
...insularity of West 47th Street stems from the homogeneity of the diamond dealers. The vast majority are Jewish. Until the end of World War II, there were only a couple of diamond shops in the 47th Street area. Then came the influx of survivors from the Nazi Holocaust, many bearing the tattoos of their concentration camps. The newcomers entered a business that had been a specialty of Jews since the Middle Ages, when the trade was one of the few professions that did not come under the purview of a tightly controlled guild. Diamonds were also perfect wares...
Almost a third of the workers on 47th Street are Hasidic Jews, a Yiddish-speaking, fundamentalist sect. The men let their beards and forelocks grow, as admonished by the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Deeply religious, the Hasidim from Brooklyn travel in a bus that is divided down the aisle by a curtain, segregating men and women for prayer sessions on the way to work...
...small groups of Hasidim, shaded by their wide-brimmed hats, stand on the sidewalk in front of the delis, speaking Yiddish, holding diamonds up for study and striking deals. Antwerp must have had similar scenes in 1608, when there were 104 Jewish diamond cutters in the city. On 47th Street, the old ways are still the best. They always have been in the diamond business...