t’s 2019 in the New York offices of Emco Gem Inc., a specialist in buying and selling Colombian emeralds. Seated at a table to the left, Oren Nhaissi presents a suite of emeralds. At another table, to the right, Thomas Faerber, a dealer in gemstones, diamonds and antique jewellery, co-founder of GemGenève, is examining a stone and engaged in whispered conversation with Yaron Nhaissi, Oren’s brother.
– Did you buy it? I asked Thomas Faerber.
– No, I didn’t say Mazal, he replied.
– Mazal?
– I didn’t say Mazal U’Bracha. It’s what we say when we conclude a sale. It’s binding. Such a practice would seem entirely utopian were it not very real and ingrained in the diamond trade for more than a century. But where did it originate?
Closing a sale with a handshake and the words Mazal U’Bracha forms part of the unwritten rules that govern trade in precious stones. This is all it takes for a gem, however valuable, to change hands. Lili Goldberg is the widow of William Goldberg, a legendary figure of New York’s Diamond District. In 2019 she told us how “when you say Mazal, you give your word. There’s no need to sign a contract, the stone is sold. This is an incredible industry, based on trust.” Indeed, each year billions of dollars pass from hand to hand, or rather from account to account, on the sole strength of these words. “There’s no going back on your word, no changing your mind.”
“I give you my blessing”
But what does Mazal U’Bracha mean? We asked Rabbi David Leybel, of Leybel-Elieli Diamonds Ltd. “Mazal means ‘luck’ and Bracha means ‘I give you my blessing’. The stone is now yours and with all my heart I wish for it to bring you luck, that you can sell it, and I bless you. There’s a lot of superstition in this business. When you say someone has ‘a bad hand’ it means you never make a profit from a stone they sell you, whereas when you say to someone ‘We have a good hand together”, it means there’s chemistry between buyer and seller, and whenever one buys from the other, they make a profit. You must give the stone with all your heart, so it can be sold. So Mazal U’Bracha is a way of saying ‘you’ll make a good deal with your stone because I gave it to you with all my heart’.”
Who was first to utter these words? According to Rabbi David Leybel, opinions diverge. “Some say the phrase comes from Maimonides, but he was never in the diamond trade. Apparently, the phrase already appears in some eighteenth-century contracts. Jews have been very much involved in the diamond trade, starting with those who went to Holland after they were expelled from Spain in 1492. Originally, diamond trading was based in Holland. The Jewish community in Amsterdam included Jews from Italy, Spain and Portugal, such as the Spinozas who had fled the Inquisition. It was a very open-minded community. From Amsterdam, the diamond trade moved to Antwerp and, because it was run by Jews, this phrase became part of tradition. It’s a way of saying ‘deal done’. If, after saying Mazal, someone tries to pull out of a deal, they can be taken to court because it’s equivalent to signing a contract. When I started in this business, we said Mazal, we tore off a scrap of paper, wrote down the number of carats, the price, and signed it. Your word was your bond.”
An unwritten rule since the nineteenth century
At DDI Diamond Distributors Inc. in New York, we were told how Mazal U’Bracha “has been in use since the nineteenth century and originated at the Amsterdam diamond exchange, which was a centre for diamond-cutting. The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) didn’t exist and nor did the Rapaport Diamond Report [used to establish benchmark pricing for cut white diamonds]. There was a great deal of uncertainty surrounding roughs. It was a speculative business. A rough could make you a lot or lose you a lot, hence dealers started saying Mazal so they wouldn’t lose money. Bracha, a blessing, came next. When someone sold you a diamond, first they wished you luck, that you wouldn’t lose money, then that you would use the money wisely, in good health, with joy and generosity, that you would spend in ways that would do good, that you would give to charity, family and friends. This is why the two words were spoken together.”
“Mazal U’Bracha transcends the world’s problems”
“Only once have we had to hire a law firm, to protect our patent for the Ashoka diamond cut,” Saul Goldberg, president of William Goldberg, told us in 2019. “I’ve worked in this industry my entire life and every transaction has been sealed with a handshake. Until that one time, we’d never had to use an attorney. Mazal U’Bracha means everything.”
Asked how such a thing is possible in an age when contracts can run to a hundred pages, his answer was “I’ve no idea. We attended I don’t know how many Basel fairs, spent hours with customers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Abu Dhabi or Japan, and at the end we’d embrace, say ‘Mazal U’Bracha’ and we’d all keep our word. There was no animosity between us, no political talk. When I think of all these interactions in our industry, I say to myself we should be living in peace. Mazal U’Bracha transcends the world’s problems.”
The phrase is not without consequence. Anyone who goes back on their word risks finding themselves in court, not to mention the loss of reputation, which is vital in this business. Trust and reputation are two things that money cannot buy. They are earned throughout a lifetime and, once lost, can never be regained.
