Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

26 Adr. Monday and Other Tales of Jewish Amsterdam

diamond industry. Twenty thousand diamond workers in a city of little more than half a million souls. Not including the related professions such as the manufacturers of tools, the shops that sell workman's blouses, and the middle class that earns a living from and through the "Trade". For the diamond workers the verb "to work" only has one meaning— "Work" you can only do in the diamond trade. In other professions you toil, slave, grind, drudge.

I will give you an example. One day an unemployed diamond worker is taking a stroll along the quay and he sees another unemployed colleague, dead-beat from toil, climb up out of the hold of a ship with a 50 kilo bale of sugar on his back.

He asks "Aren't you working?"

The children of diamond workers receive instructions in a playful manner. The diamond cutter cannot cut a pear for them without making a brilliant out of it. First he tells the child to remove a very thin slice. "Be careful," he warns. "When the stone loses too much in the cutting, the boss can hang himself."

The pear now has a beautifully smooth and pure form.

"So...and now you make the little table."

The pear diamond gets a smooth upper surface.

"And now the bezels, and here, those are the pavilions. So, now the stone is in the girdle. Making the brilliant you must also learn. See, and now here you...Ai, you've cut too much off. You should have left a culet, now you've botched the stone!"

Bezels, pavilions, culets...For the layman they are all only sides and edges of the diamond. He cannot tell one