Dynamics of Duos

Working with your spouse: the ultimate in marital bliss or a downhill path to inevitable disaster? 

Yisroel and Devorah Feder of Jay Feder Jewelers have been doing it for years — and here, they’re refreshingly candid about the good, the bad, the ugly — and the strikingly beautiful — of the “co-preneur” life.

GROWING PAINS 

Jay Feder Jewelers was founded in 1979 in Denver, Colorado, by Jay and Celia Feder, Yisroel’s parents. Today, JFJ is an industry-leading business with locations in Denver, New York, and Boca Raton. They source, design, and sell custom and artisanal pieces, off ering a curated collection of jewelry to satisfy virtually every client’s taste and budget. Growing up, Yisroel Feder was the only one of the family’s off spring (he has two brothers and two sisters) with an affi nity for the company; he absorbed both his parents’ love for jewelry and their scrupulous approach to business. A particularly memorable second-grade show-and-tell session had little Yisroel (and his mother) displaying a massive diamond to his classmates. He also worked in the store as a teen and enrolled in a Gemological Institute of America course at 17.

After learning for several years at Ner Israel in Baltimore, and later at a yeshivah in Israel, Yisroel married Devorah Bakst in February 2000. Devorah was 18 and Yisroel was 22 — and the young couple settled in Israel for a short time. In 2001, Yisroel and Devorah moved back to Denver, intending to remain for a year or so, but that “year” wound up stretching to eight. In 2008, the elder Feders made aliyah, transferring ownership of the store to their son and daughter-in-law. “Denver is a great community, but it wasn’t working out for us there as a family,” Devorah says. She explains that it was mostly older couples living in the community, so it was hard for her to fi nd her place. With all of her family on the East Coast, she began to feel homesick. “We hadn’t planned on living there for so long. We had dreamed of expanding to New York, but we didn’t have a clear idea of what we wanted to do there. We decided to move to Passaic, which off ered a short commute to the city and close proximity to my family in Brooklyn.” “I’d always wanted to join the wholesale jewelry trade,” says Yisroel. “We opened an offi ce on 47th Street — the hub of the diamond district — and expanded to include customization.”