Members of the Meirov family with IDI managing director – Precious Stones Exchange president – Shlomo Eshed (far left), IDE president – Yair Sahar (fourth from left), IsDMA president – Bumi Traub (sixth from left) and Moti Besser (far right).
The family settled in the Bukharin neighborhood of Afula in northern Israel. My father, Michael, was three years old at the time. He did not enjoy a spoiled, indulgent childhood. At the age of 13 he already began supporting the family. He prepared and sold sandwiches and wine to British soldiers, polished shoes and when he got older, he worked in construction. He even built a synagogue together with his friends.
In 1949 he was introduced to the young Zilpah (Zulay in Bukharin), who had arrived in Israel a year earlier together with her brothers and sisters from Uzbekistan, through the Youth Aliya organization. They had gone straight to their older brother, who was already living in Jerusalem. Michael, who came to Jerusalem with his uncle and his parents to meet his intended, was forced to return to Afula deeply disappointed. It turned out the Zilpah’s parents could not provide any dowry. The uncle refused the match and took everything they had brought in his truck back to Afula. But the young Michael didn’t give up. That same evening he returned to Jerusalem, showed up at Zilpah’s house and told her “I have nothing to give you, but I promise to give you children, to educate the children well and to support everyone for life. Zilpah said, “That’s all I want,” and their family story began.
Many years passed until Zilpah had the pleasure of sitting at the center of the Outstanding Exporter celebration, surrounded by the love, warmth, appreciation and friendship of all her friends and family.
Getting back to our story of the Meirov family, the newly-wed Michael become a taxi driver and worked from morning to night and fulfill his promises to his young bride: children, education and support. But then Michael was wounded by seven bullets during the Sinai Campaign. He lost his taxi driver license and in 1967 found himself unable to find work. Together with his children – the late Tsipi, who was then 18; Ilana, who as 17; Benny, then 16; Yossi, 14 and the late Margalit, then 12, he opened a kiosk. “Business thrived,” Benny Meirov tells us. “Every night at least 150 people would sit at Mifgash Hadekalim, as it was called, eating ice cream and drinking espresso. Nicknamed Hadikliya, it was very popular and we – my father, mother and 5 children, along with the help of our schoolmates, worked until 1 in the morning. At 8 we had to be in school. We made good money, and my father even bought us all apartments. When my turn came to go to high school, I enrolled in the Air Force Technical School, where I learned aircraft electricity. I did my mandatory military duty as well as an extra year in the professional army. I was wounded by a flare that smashed by left hand and right foot and was hospitalized for 5 months and then spent 8 months in the Kaye convalescent home in Nahariya.”
JOINING THE INDUSTRY
DIAMOND MANUFACTURING was not entirely foreign to the Meirov family. As part of his activity in helping absorb new immigrants from Bukhara, in the 1970s the father of the family, Michael, approached a relative – diamantaire Yossi Ben Zion – and asked him to opened a polishing plant in Afula and train new immigrants to work there. But Benny and Yossi’s professional career was decided in 1975, when their uncle, Amnon Rachminov, a diamantaire that lived in Belgium at the time, offered Benny – whose arm and leg were still in casts – to join the company’s office in the Shimshon Building. “After a year of studies in Ramat Gan office, I was transferred to my uncle’s office in Belgium. Two and a half years later, my uncle asked me to manage his office in New York. I agreed on the condition that Yossi, my brother, would join the office in Belgium. And so it was – my brother Yossi managed the office of the Rachminov brothers in Antwerp and I managed their office in New York until 1980, when I chose Los Angeles and opened a partnership there with the Rachminov brothers. However, the younger generation of the Rachminovs slowly began joining the business and in 1990 we decided to part ways. We did so amicably, maintaining good, friendly relations. Yossi and I opened independent offices – he in Belgium and I in Los Angeles.
In 1994, inspired by Zionism and my desire that my children live as teenagers in Israel, I left the management of the Los Angeles office to someone else and opened the firm, B. Y. Meirov (Benny and Yossi Meirov) in Israel. I bought polished goods and sent them to my brother to be marketed in Belgium. However, five years later Yossi also decided that his children had reached the age when they should return to Israel. In 1999 we formed a five-year partnership with David Elishayov. When the partnership ended, we also parted on very good terms.
In 2005 Yossi and I opened the partnership, MID – Meirov International House of Diamonds. In our very first year of activity our export figures soared and they continue to do so, with God’s will, to this day. We attribute a large part of our success to Union Bank, which has backed us all the way.”
Play Video
Play Video
