Send food to a shiva house. Not jewelry.That is the honest answer and we sell jewelry, so take it as meant. During the seven days the family is not shopping, not cooking, and not in a state to appreciate a gift they have to react to. A platter, a meal, kosher baked goods from somewhere the family will actually eat from. That is the gift.Jewelry has a place in Jewish mourning, but it is later, and knowing the difference is most of what this page is for.The shiva window: what to sendFood, and specifically food that needs nothing done to...
Read more
Money is the default Jewish wedding gift and there is nothing wrong with it. Chai multiples, 180, 360, whatever the family norm is. But if you want to give something she will still have in twenty years, jewelry with Hebrew on it is the version that survives.This is what people actually buy, and who it is right for.For the kallah, from family or a close friendThe verse that dominates here is ืื ื ืืืืื ืืืืื ืื, Ani L'Dodi V'Dodi Li, from Shir HaShirim. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. We make it as a spinner ring at sixty-eight...
Read more
Most jewelry sold with Hebrew on it was never checked by someone who reads Hebrew. That is the actual problem, and it is why people end up with a final letter in the middle of a word or a name spelled the way a font guessed it.Here is how engraving Hebrew actually works, what physically fits on each kind of piece, and where it goes wrong.Real letterforms, not a decorative fontHebrew has five letters that change shape at the end of a word: ื ื ื ืฃ ืฅ. Software that treats Hebrew as decoration gets these wrong, because it renders...
Read more
ืื ื ืืืืื ืืืืื ืื. I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine. It comes from Shir HaShirim, Song of Songs 6:3, and it is the line Jewish couples put on wedding bands more than any other.The Honest Jeweler makes it two ways, and engraves it to order on a third.Why this verse and not another oneSong of Songs reads as love poetry and has been understood for centuries as something larger than that. The phrase itself is symmetrical in Hebrew, which is part of why it works on a ring: the two halves mirror each other the way the...
Read more
You cannot buy an Eshet Chayil piece off our shelf, because we do not make one. What we do is engrave ืืฉืช ืืื onto a piece you choose, in real Hebrew letterforms, and show you a proof before anything is cut. If you wanted a ready-made pendant with the words already on it, that is a different shop and we would rather say so than waste your afternoon.Here is what actually matters if you are buying this as a gift.What Eshet Chayil means, and why people want it engravedEshet Chayil, ืืฉืช ืืื, opens the last passage of Mishlei, Proverbs chapter...
Read more
Q: Is there fidget jewelry that is actually fine jewelry? A: Yes, though the market is oddly split. At the top, houses like Messika built the Move line around diamonds that slide inside the setting, which is beautiful and tactile and costs what a designer diamond piece costs. At the bottom sit thousands of plated fidget rings for the price of a sandwich. There is very little in between, which is exactly the gap people are describing when they ask for something "fidget worthy" that is not a toy and not Messika. That middle is where a solid metal spinner...
Read more