Later this week, I’ll be flying back home after spending a month with my love here in Spain. When I flew to Madrid last month, I could not imagine that a few weeks later, I would be following the news coming from Israel for hours at length throughout the eleven days of the latest round of fighting with Hamas. A day after the ceasefire took hold, I listened to the press conference of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu en the Minister of Defense Benny Gantz. As [...]
Every Friday morning, around seven, Mitzpe Ramon’s only paper delivery man hurls two weekend papers over the fence: the Hebrew-language HaAretz and the International New York Times (INYT). Their arrival is often announced by a loud thud, as the roll, heavy with its multiple supplements, bounces off my front door. While enjoying my first coffee of the day, I always first open the HaAretz weekend magazine to read the column by the investigative journalist Nir Gontarz. Each week, Gontarz calls and ‘interrogates’ a personality who [...]
Today, it is 25 years ago that Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, was murdered on the Kings of Israel Square in the center of Tel Aviv during a massive peace demonstration by some 400,000 people. My oldest daughter Taïr had just turned four. Now a beautiful woman of 29, she has never known the square other than Rabin Square, since shortly after the murder, the place was renamed. She lives right around the corner. She does remember well, however, how her [...]
Last month, Israel “pulled the plug on God TV." the evangelical channel “spreading the gospel of Jezus” to the Jews. God TV is an evangelical TV network that, according to its website, broadcasts worldwide to hundreds of millions of viewers. The programs are made by broadcasters who have an Anglican, Pentecostal, “Full Gospel,” or Messianic-Jewish background. Messianic Jews are Jews who accept the figure of Jezus as the Messiah, just like ‘normal’ Christians. From a traditional-Jewish viewpoint, Jews who take this step commit no [...]
Earlier this month, Business of Fashion held a professional summit, entitled How to build a responsible fashion business. The four hour-summit covered a wealth of topics that discussed the fashion business' values, labor rights, discrimination, and racial inequality, and sustainability. It was an inspiring afternoon! Of course, nothing that happens in the fashion industry stays in the fashion industry. These topics, with variations, also apply to the luxury industry, among them the diamond, gemstone, and jewelry trade, as often demonstrated by the content published on [...]
I write this column with trepidation, as it discusses how the ultra-orthodox Jewish cities and neighborhoods in Israel have become the central hot spots of the coronavirus. With trepidation, because no matter how careful I will spin the tale and report on the below, it is bad news. The good news is that, in a recent report, Israel was identified as one of the safest countries at the time of this pandemic. That is encouraging news, but it can still change. A humorous look at [...]
BC-AC? No, it’s is not the name of a band. That’s AC-DC. BC-AC is a term we’re going to hear a lot more in the coming weeks, months, and maybe years. I first came across it on March 20, in an article in the New York Times, written by the renowned journalist and columnist Thomas Friedman. “There is the world B.C. - Before Corona – and the world A.C. – After Corona. We have not even begun to fully grasp what the A.C. world will [...]
On Thursday, I watched Martin Rapaport’s webinar. The webinar ran for almost two hours. As Rapaport carried on, I became progressively more uncomfortable. Did he ask valid questions? He sure did. Here are some of the questions he asked. Are diamonds more than a luxury product? Are they better than shoes and pocketbooks? Are diamonds valuable? Why?Who makes them valuable? Who stands behind those diamonds? Are diamonds a store of value in troubled times? Good questions, you’ll agree. He then continued making some more good [...]
Earlier this week, Vlad Yavorskyy posted a story about Mandarin Garnet on Facebook. He wrote: “In recent years many new gemstones have been unearthed in distant and exotic places, occasioning great excitement in the gem world. One such a fantastic moment came at the beginning of the 1990’s with the discovery of a vivid orange garnet in the remote North-West of Namibia….” And “Mandarin garnet itself is a spessartite with some almandine, and owes its bright orange color to the presence of manganese...” Thank you, [...]
In early September, the head of the IDEX design team sent me the draft of the info mailer that announced the publication of IDEX Magazine’s September issue. If you haven’t seen it, take a look. It’s a great issue with a brilliant cover story by IDEX’s former head of research, Ken Gassman, that was inspired, so he said, by several of my Eagles-themed Memos. There is also an insightful article by Rami Baron and an important profile of Victoria McKay, who heads the Women’s’ Jewellery [...]
