The Jerusalem Diamond by Noah Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

scholastic. Every morning except on the
Shabbat
, uniformed in a dark suit, he rode the subway from Park Avenue to Brooklyn. In a brownstone with creaking floors he had joined Max Bronstein and four other neophytes who sat with scholars and sages in unending discussion and argument about Talmud and rabbinic literature.
    It was a strange world of labor for scholarship’s sake, a school from which the best students never were graduated. Some of the men had been studying at the same scarred oak table for fifteen years, not to acquire wealth or honor but for the love of God. Others had been scholars even longer, having come to Brownsville with the yeshiva from Lithuania, fleeing the Nazis. Rebbe Yitzhak was empowered to confer
smicha
, ordination as a rabbi; but he did this only when extreme poverty forced a man from his contemplation into rabbinic work, or when the individual’s scholarship wasn’t impeccable.
    In those days Bronstein had been skinny and sallow, with eyes like the ones El Greco gave Christ. After six months and a lot of cafeteria coffee, he and Harry had convinced themselves that God, like whisky and war, was an invention of man. Dazzled and fearful at his own audacity, Harry had left the Yeshiva Torat Moshe to polish diamonds in his father’s shop until the next term at Columbia.
    Family tradition or not, Alfred never pulled him into the diamond business, but when he came on his own accord, his father was a meticulous teacher. Although by that time Harry had absorbed a lot through his pores, Alfred started at the beginning, with a cut diamond as a primer.
    â€œEach of these little planes, each precisely polished surface, is a facet. The octagonal facet at the top of a round stone is the table. The facet at the very bottom of the diamond is the culet. The extreme outer edgeof a fashioned stone—right where a woman’s hips would be, where a fat woman wears one—is called a girdle …”
    Yes, Pa.
    Bronstein, whose father’s piety was narrower than Alfred’s, had fled stormy family scenes and moved a safe distance, to the University of Chicago. Despite having to work—ironically, in a kosher slaughterhouse—he had won a bachelor’s degree in linguistics in two and one-half years; then, being perverse Max Bronstein, he took the next eight years to earn his doctorate. By that time a steady stream of papers of unrelenting distinction won him a reputation and a job with the Reform seminary, which he accepted with the same equanimity he would have shown had the school been Jesuit or Buddhist. For its part, the Reform seminary got both the best linguistic geographer in America and a genuine resident atheist, proof of its liberalism.
    â€œThere you are,” Max said, as though Harry had left him twenty minutes before. His handshake was strong. He was heavier and he had grown a mustache. “Harry, Harry.”
    â€œLong time.”
    â€œDamn long time.”
    â€œHow are you, Maxie?”
    â€œLife’s tolerable. And you?”
    Harry smiled. “Tolerable’s a good word.”
    They talked amiably about the old days, compared notes on people they knew.
    â€œIt looks as if David Leslau has really fallen into it,” Harry said at last.
    â€œYou sound jealous.”
    â€œAren’t you? This is once in a lifetime.”
    â€œThe headaches he faces are once in a lifetime, too,” Bronstein said dryly. He took from his desk drawer a heavy manila envelope and from it removed some large photographic negatives in which Harry could see Hebrew script.
    Harry picked up the photographs. “I’m disappointed. I thought I was going to see the original.”
    â€œFat chance,” Bronstein said. “My friend David won’t let his find out of his sight. Would you?”
    â€œNo. What can you tell me?”
    Bronstein shrugged. “Over the centuries the copper had oxidized almost completely. David handled it very well, much