Max's Diamonds

 Now in his 80s after a career as an attorney, author Jay Greenfield is publishing his first novel, Max's Diamonds.  Thanks to a small independent publishing company Chickadee Prince this novel will be reaching readers.  It is a suspenseful plot that takes us from Brooklyn, NY at the end of World War II up to the 1990s, showing the progression of how Jews in United States thought about themselves and how they fit into American society.  This is a story of inner conflict.  The guilt of being a survivor of the Holocaust, of being a child of survivors, and the conflict of wanting to fit into American society but always feeling different.

This is the story of Paul Hartman, son of Czechoslovakian immigrants who escaped Nazi Europe and settled in the Arverne neighborhood of Rockaway Queens, NY.  We hear the story from Paul's perspective, who as a young boy of 10 years old, looses his father to a heart attack and grows up first with the guilt of thinking it is his fault, then with the feeling that he also is somehow responsible for the death of Max.

Arverne is home to many Jewish immigrants who are struggling to make a living in America.  Paul and his family run a grocery store and share a small apartment when cousin, Max, a survivor of the Holocaust comes to stay with them until he can get adjusted to life in the US.  Paul is haunted for the rest of his life by the memory of Max, his tattooed number from Auschwitz and his mysterious cache of diamonds.

Paul's last memory of the lesson his taught him, "to beat them at their own game".  So as he goes along this is the message drives him forward.  It is a time of anti-Semitism in this country and Jews are trying to assimilate, to join clubs, attend universities and get jobs that have been closed off to minorities.  At a time in history when Jackie Robinson is the first black to play professional baseball. Paul gets accepted to Columbia and then to Harvard and then to a law firm as the first token Jew.

Throughout the whole story, Paul is never comfortable in his own skin.  He always feels like he is being tolerated or used, in his personal relationships and his jobs.  Though he is an extremely successful lawyer he still feels like he doesn't really deserve the accolades, and that it could all disappear at any moment.  At one point there is a chance for Paul to start over and move to Hong Kong and he sees this as an opportunity for change, "There would be an opportunity for new friendships and perhaps, romances in a place where he wouldn't often feel like the other - like the New York Jew who, with help from his father-in-law, made it big in a firm dominated by Boston Brahmins.  Although he had achieved great professional and financial success at B & K, Paul never quite felt he belonged here."


Greenfield has given us a well paced plot that keeps the reader engaged in the well defined characters, wanting to find out what will happen to each of them, Paul, his family and his employers. This novel also covers many of the subjects of American history, including immigration out of war torn Europe, and how the Holocaust was a well kept secret by the survivors.  Greenfield looks at how in the 1950s Jews were discriminated against in colleges and professional offices.  Also what it was like to be part of the American Jews or children of survivors, knowing what it was like to feel like a victim.