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Casual dealings like these would seem to make the area ripe for robberies. It is hard to say how much is stolen per year—$1.1 million worth of diamonds was reported taken during the first 2½ months of 1979—because the dealers shy away from police. Says Lieut. Edward O'Connor, commander of the Manhattan robbery squad and a former detective in the diamond district: "It's a very clandestine business. Very few people will cooperate or tell you anything."
Justice is something the community prefers to handle itself. Disputes are arbitrated by a panel of the Diamond Dealers Club composed of three or more men whose logic has been sharpened by intense study of the Talmud, the volumes of Jewish law. The decisions of these scholars, who act like the Jewish religious courts that existed in Europe hundreds of years ago, are law to those in the diamond trade.
One growing problem on the street is that the traditional codes revered by the Hasidim are not as deeply ingrained in what they refer to as the street's "new element." There has been an influx of younger, Middle Eastern Jews into the trade. Says one oldtime cutter: "They are aggressive, irresponsible, not steeped in tradition." Broker Pinchos Jaroslawicz, 25, made the mistake of trusting one of these new diamond workers, a young Israeli named Shlomo Tal. Jaroslawicz took along his pouch of diamonds one day in September 1977, when he went to call on Tal. The young Israeli and an accomplice were found guilty of murdering and robbing the broker and stuffing his body, wrapped in plastic, into a wooden box in Tal's office.
Despite the problems, the street is resisting change, reluctant to move away from dealing in nods and trust and credit. On a sunny spring day, small groups of Hasidim, shaded by their wide-brimmed hats, stand on the sidewalk in front of the delis, speaking Yiddish, holding diamonds up for study and striking deals. Antwerp must have had similar scenes in 1608, when there were 104 Jewish diamond cutters in the city. On 47th Street, the old ways are still the best. They always have been in the diamond business.