In the year of approximately 1965, my mom and my sister, Valerie, and I were living in Philadelphia. My mom was a single parent with a job at a department store in Philadelphia. The three of us were living in a one-room apartment.  For the most part we came up Christian and the reason for that was a lot of immigrants who came to the United States were veiling their ethnicity to blend in.

A lot of celebrities with ethnicity came to Hollywood and changed their names to very American, generic names. Albeit they were Jewish or Italian, what have you and so in fact this was the case with our family. Thankfully my grandmother is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Onsala, Sweden, but to adapt, it was important that we be Christian.

For this Christmas, we weren’t having a tree, there were no gifts and we weren’t having any of the decoration or materials of celebration and so my sister and I had gone to sleep and our good family friend and a good friend of my mom’s by the name of Edward Fingerhood was from Philadelphia and a good Jewish family. There was a knock at the door late in the evening and my mom thought, “who could that be at this time in the night?” She opened the door and there’s this big Christmas tree. And boom, out from behind the Christmas tree comes Edward Fingerhood. He said, “I got a tree for you, Vivian.” She replied, “Oh my God, this is incredible. Why are you bringing me a tree?”

“Well, this is what Christians do right? They have a tree to celebrate the birth of Christ, right?”

“Well, yeah, so?”

“And your kids would probably like a tree, right?”

“Well, yeah”

“Well, here it is”

And he brings the tree in and he had some other bags and he said, “and it’s the Christian tradition to adorn the tree with bulbs and lights and things, right?”

“Well, yeah”

“Well, I got a couple strings of lights and some bows and some bulbs. And also a star for the top of the tree which is the Christian tradition, right?”

So they put the tree up and all the decorations on and Edward said, “Well, I brought some gifts by for the kids. They’d probably like that, right? Sort of the tradition?”

“Yeah,” and we weren’t getting any gifts and she was overwhelmed at the act of joy. And Edward said, “and I got you a gift I’d like you to have.” And he gave this little box to my mother and inside was a beautiful golden Logan David necklace, a golden Star of David.

“Well now I know you’re a practicing Christian but from one Jew to another, I think it’s really important that on this Christmas, that I give you a symbol of the Star of David and I want you to have this.”

My mother was overjoyed and it ended up my sister got up in the morning to this whole Christmas wonderland and it was like magic.

Years later, Edward and my mom got together at some point here in California, and Edward asked, “by the way, Vivian, do you still have that star of David I gave you back in 1965?”

“I feel really bad about this Edward. I am reluctant to tell you.”

“Just tell me.”

“I had to pawn the necklace at one point because I didn’t have any food or money for the kids and it was my last resort. It was the only nice thing I had and there was a good Jewish pawnshop that took it for a good price. I had to pawn it for the emergency and unfortunately I didn’t have the money to get it back.

Without even blinking Edward said, “Then the Logan David did its job.  It helped you and it helped the kids.”

And that gave me the motivation to try to find a Logan Star of David necklace for her. I went to several pawnshops and though I found a lot of Jewish jewelry, I didn’t see anything that I thought my mom would like. And that’s when I found your name and it seemed perfect. After talking to you on the phone, I needed to see your shop. As soon as I saw your necklace with the Star of David, I knew that was something that my mom would just love. When I saw you put on that necklace, I thought, “that’s perfect.”

When I gave it to her on Christmas Eve, she was flabbergasted and it was like a mystically perfect gift. Thank you very much for making it, being here in that moment and showing it to me. I am eternally grateful, thank you.