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Since the translation of the Septuagint in the 3rd century BCE, scholars have attempted to identify the stones that populate the biblical text. This study rejects the long-standing reliance on ancient translations for identifying biblical stones. Despite the evident contradictions and historical inconsistencies, scholars traditionally presumed these translations to be reliable. By departing from this approach, this volume presents a novel synthesis of comparative linguistics and archeogemological data. Through rigorous analysis of valid cognates, it establishes correlations between Hebrew stone names and their counterparts in ancient languages, corresponding to known mineral species. This methodological shift enables a more accurate identification of stones mentioned in biblical texts, thus recovering their true historical context. The research not only advances our understanding of biblical mineralogy but also provides a fresh perspective on the material culture of the Ancient Levant, offering valuable insights for scholars and laymen, linguists and archaeologists alike.
Sequestered within the heart of a cosmopolitan city is an exotic world—a place where diamonds, astronomically priced, are bought and sold on the strength of a handshake, and business disputes are resolved according to ancient Jewish principles of arbitration. Yet it is also a modern industry facing the same fundamental global changes affecting all businesses today.In Diamond Stories, Renée Rose Shield leads us into the unexamined realm of wholesale diamond traders in New York. Related to several well-respected traders, she had unprecedented access to a society normally closed to outside inquiry. Here she deftly blends her personal relationship and her anthropological training to provide an insightful exploration of this tradition-bound industry, the new challenges it faces, and the ways both industry and individuals adapt to and endure change.Shield begins with a fascinating history of diamond mining, combining the story of the De Beers cartel, the role of Jews in the trade, and the part diamonds have played both in war and liberation. Throughout, she incorporates commentary by current diamond traders. Succeeding chapters explore the evolving nature of both the global trade and the New York diamond district. Shield takes a close look at the increasingly complex ethnic makeup of the district, illuminates the rarely documented work done by women, chronicles the resilient system of arbitration, and reveals the ways in which many traders work well into their eighties and nineties. Their long lives of work, cushioned by the trade's social environment, offer hints for successful aging in general.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- PREFACE -- 1 The Diamond -- 2 The Ancient World -- 3 Early Persia and the East -- 4 Medieval Europe -- 5 The Dawn of Diamond Cutting in Europe -- 6 The Fifteenth-Century Technical Revolution -- 7 Renaissance Table and Point Cuts -- 8 Renaissance Multifaceted Cuts -- 9 The Early Brilliant Cut -- 10 Diamond Cutting in London -- 11 The Value and Assessment of Diamonds -- 12 The Indian Diamond Mines -- 13 The Diamond Trade in India -- 14 Diamond Cutting in India and the East -- 15 The Eclipse of Indian Diamonds -- Epilogue -- APPENDIX: A 1675 Description of the Diamond Mines -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- T -- V -- W -- Y -- Z
A morning in October 1830 - in the Polish town of Bialystok, then part of the Russian Empire. The day is starting normally for Murad Amrad Galperin, a well-respected member of the town’s thriving population of Ashkenazi Jews. On this day however, a sequence of events begin to unfurl that will later culminate in Murad Amrad being accused of the murder of a young Russian Viscount who owes him a considerable amount of money. Shortly before his death, the Viscount secretly gave Murad Amrad a gold bejewelled box topped with a priceless diamond as collateral against his loans. It belonged to his mother, the Countess, and was not his to give, but Murad Amrad assured him of its safe return once his debts were repaid. After the Viscount’s body is found however, and the Russian authorities seek to make him a scapegoat, Murad Amrad is reluctant to reveal the presence of the jewel box for fear of incriminating himself further. Assisted by his friends and the rabbi, and seeing no other option, he decides to flee, taking his extended family and the jewel box with him. At a time when harsh discriminatory legislation was forcing thousands of Jews to leave their homes and seek employment elsewhere, and when the repercussions of the Polish rebellion against the Russian authorities was still reverberating around Eastern Europe, the Galperin family set out on a journey that ultimately transforms their lives. But there’s a cost to pay. Set amongst the turbulent history of the 19th century, when the mighty Russian Empire ruled much of Europe, and the Ottoman Empire the Middle East, The Diamond Fund is a story of human resourcefulness under enormous pressure, the hardships of reinvention and the pain of loss. The reader is taken through decades and great distances from Poland to Palestine and beyond, meeting some extraordinary characters along the way. This book explores the complex mingling of global and family history and will appeal to all readers of historical fiction, as well as those interested in the politics of Europe, Russia and Palestine during the 19th century.
As historical analyses of Diaspora Jewish visual culture blossom in quantity and sophistication, this book analyzes 19th-20th-century developments in Jewish Palestine and later the State of Israel. In the course of these approximately one hundred years, Zionist Israelis developed a visual corpus and artistic lexicon of Jewish-Israeli icons as an anchor for the emerging “civil religion.” Bridging internal tensions and even paradoxes, artists dynamically adopted, responded to, and adapted significant Diaspora influences for Jewish-Israeli purposes, as well as Jewish religious themes for secular goals, all in the name of creating a new state with its own paradoxes, simultaneously styled on the Enlightenment nation-state and Jewish peoplehood.