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SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 | ELUL 20, 5782 | VOLUME 74, NUMBER 26
Local jewelry business is a family affair MALA BLOMQUIST | MANAGING EDITOR
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arry Cohen’s father, Jacob, started a jewelry business in Chicago in the early 1950s. When Cohen was 6 years old, his father brought him to work. He sat the boy down on some Yellow Pages so he could reach the workbench and gave him a pair of tweezers, an old watch and a screwdriver and told him to take the watch apart. “Honestly, in 15 minutes, I knew what I was going to do the rest of my life,” said Cohen. Today, Cohen is the owner of Elite Jewelry and Loan, home of Elite Fine Jewelers, and is also known as “The Gold Guy,” with three stores that go by that name. Cohen moved to Arizona 13 years ago, following his three children who all attended Arizona State University. The family are members of Chabad at ASU Smetana Family Shul at the Levenbaum Chabad House in Tempe. He opened his own fine jewelry store at 18 in Chicago and bought and sold jewelry stores through the years. When Cohen arrived in Arizona, he noticed an abundance of gold-buying stores. With his experience in the jewelry business, he started doing gold-buying parties at different locations and in people’s homes and opened eight gold-buying stores in the Greater Phoenix area. He said the origin of The Gold Guy stores’ name was beshert. He and his wife, Beth, were at a restaurant when a couple waved them down. “Aren’t you the gold guy?’ they asked. Cohen admitted he was, and they told him they had attended one of his gold-buying parties. When they were leaving, another woman approached him and asked if he was the gold guy. “We did a party at her house, too,” Cohen said. “The same day, at the same time, two people asked me, “Aren’t you the gold guy?” Those two people gave us the name.
East Valley rabbi and CEO connects with his Sephardi side SHANNON LEVITT | STAFF WRITER
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s a kid in a small Jewish community in the northern Italian city of Milan, Rabbi Michael Beyo was steeped in Sephardi traditions. His father was born in Turkey, the country where his family had lived for 500 years after being expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. But when he stepped outside his home, Beyo was surrounded by the dominant Ashkenazi culture of his mother and his country. For years he didn’t question the prevalence of Ashkenazi Jews. But when he was 12, a teacher told him that if his Hebrew pronunciation was Sephardi, rather than Ashkenazi, God wouldn’t hear his prayers. “He was a teacher, and I believed him,” Beyo said. A lot has changed in the years since for the CEO of the East Valley Jewish Community Center, and recently, he was named one of the leadership fellows in the Sephardic Leadership Institute’s (SLI) first national cohort. The program, intended to develop and support a network of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish professionals, will last six months. Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), a nonprofit located in Northern California,
Rabbi Michael Beyo
COURTESY OF RABBI MICHAEL BEYO
launched SLI this summer in an effort to connect North African and Middle Eastern Jewish professionals and increase their representation in Jewish organizations. Beyo learned of the fellowship program and decided to apply, both as a way to network and to look for possible collaborations with the EVJCC. And personally, it was intriguing. Before he moved to Israel in his 20s — where he would receive three rabbinical ordinations — Beyo’s experience of the wider Jewish world was dominated by Ashkenazi SEPHARDI, PAGE 2
Bye-bye to buyer fatigue With more inventory, less competitive offers and financial incentives, it has become a buyer-friendly real estate market. Go to page 20 to read more.
COURTESY OF OPHIR GROSS
FAMILY AFFAIR, PAGE 3
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