Like his Bukharan ancestors who wandered the ancient Silk Road on camels and horses to make their living in trade, Shlomo Moussaieff, 86, is a master storyteller, collector and trader. Fiddling mindlessly with a 2,000-year-old blue Roman glass vase he recently found and swears he wouldn't sell for a million dollars, just because he likes it so much, the legendary antiquities collector and multimillionaire jeweler to stars and sheikhs is holding his daily court on a recent, sunny morning. The phone rings and people come and go, occasionally exchanging money, showing an intriguing object or talking about anything from gemstones, antiquities, Kabbala and ancient history to money deals and the good old days.
Shlomo Moussaieff.
Photo: Lauren Gelfond Feldinger
In his seaside penthouse in Herzliya Pituah, his collections of everyday objects from Jewish history rival the Judaica collections of many local museums. Across his living room, beyond a scattering of antique silver, ceremonial objects, cuneiform inscriptions, mosaics, Torah scrolls, maps and manuscripts and other treasures of Judaica and Near Eastern archeology, a vignette of more colorful objects recalls the story of his own family. At the bottom of spiral staircase lined with toy camels heading up, a richly-colored silk Bukharan robe on a hanger sways slightly in a hot breeze.
"I am dyslexic," Moussaieff announces. "But I remember details, feelings. What especially inspired me from my childhood were the colorful dresses. I am fascinated by color. Do you want to see my collection of Bukharan robes?"
Moussaieff, who grew up in the Bukharan Quarter of Jerusalem, founded by his namesake grandfather, continuously pauses in the middle of his stories to recall one collection or another, to show related letters, documents or photos, to laugh, curse or flirt, or to burst into song in Hebrew or Arabic verse.
In three and a half hours of conversation, he also mentions a colorful cast of characters who he says has personally touched the lives of the Moussaieff clan, including the likes of Genghis Khan, Maimonides, Elizabeth Taylor, Moshe Dayan and Saddam Hussein's son. The family itself also creates its own infamy. His daughter, Dorit, is married to the embattled president of Iceland, and Moussaieff most recently is a star witness in the Israel Antiquities Authority's lawsuit against a team of antiquities experts it says have faked a series of important artifacts, including the contentious "James, brother of Jesus" ossuary.
His stories, like his collections, are often considered controversial. In the antiquities world, he is especially renowned for often turning his nose up at the accepted logic that artifacts should be documented in situ by archeologists to make the most of their historical meaning. Moussaieff bah-humbugs traditional thinking, arguing, like his old friend Moshe Dayan, that so-called looters are also salvaging history by bringing it into the light and keeping it out of the dusty cellars of antiquities authorities.
You are testifying in a law suit that is accusing other antiquities experts of forgery. Have you bought antiquities from them or others that have turned out to be fakes?
In court I showed them how to know if the clay is genuine - I lick it. I know the taste. After so many years in the business, just looking, you also know. Everyone who is jealous says that I have some fakes. I spend a lot of money to double-check, and so far in four years of court cases they haven't been able to prove any one of them is a fake. I have been collecting for 65 years and have 60,000 items in my collection. It is possible I have made a mistake, but if I have made a mistake, nobody can prove it. (Laughs.)
You have been collecting ancient Jewish artifacts since you were very young. Is there any truth to these legends that you got started because you were living in caves?
My grandfather had an antiquities collection. My heart was broken when, after he passed away, all the children divided the objects among themselves and sold them for pennies. But I saved mine until now.
When I was 12 my father said, "I want you to be a rabbi, but [because of the dyslexia] you can't read and write, what can I do with you?" and kicked me out of his house. So naturally I went to sleep in the synagogue. The shamash, the keeper, took good care of me. I slept on old mattresses on the floor full of flies. The Yemenites started to pray at 4:30 a.m. They were very poor and prayed around one book. Today they know how to read from every direction. I heard this for three years every day. (Moussaieff breaks into Hebrew prayers with a Yemenite accent.)
During the day I worked in a carpentry factory in Sanhedria cleaning floors. Sometimes I also slept there on straw at night. After the factory closed at 4 or 5 p.m., I wandered the caves alone. There were about 50 of them in Sanhedria, and I found little coins on the surface. In one cave I saw a door, so I went to a senior carpenter to ask him to show me how to open it. He brought an ax and we found a coffin made of lead and designed with grapes. At the time [late 1930s] lead was very expensive, he had told me.
So he cut the coffin into pieces and told me to go to the Armenian Quarter [of the Old City], where they can use lead. I got two piasters and had a party with the money with the many mad people who hung out in the caves and declared themselves the messiah. I came again, I took more, I sold more. Until one day an Arab policeman caught me, beat me and took me to a judge. They said I had destroyed ancient property and sentenced me to nine months in a reform school for children in Tulkarm called Maslahia.
You spent much of your youth in Arab institutions and with Arab children. How did that influence you?
Ninety percent [of the other youths in the reform school] were Arab. They asked my religion and when I said Jewish, they took me to study with one teacher who was a rabbi with a stick. (Breaks out in Hebrew prayer, showing me the verse he was learning at the time.) He hit me on my fingers with that stick because I couldn't remember what the verse was from. I ran away. I was afraid they were going to send me back to this rabbi, so when someone caught me and asked who I was, I said, "I am an Arab" and they put me in a madrassa. It was paradise for me [because of the dyslexia]. They put the Koran in front of the students but they didn't read, they just sang out loud. (Moussaieff breaks out singing verses in Arabic.)
