The other day, I took out a chess book from Haifa's public library--Gerald Abrahams' book Not only Chess: A Selection of Chessays. Only when I got home I realized that one of the people who took out this very book was Ernst Fischer, (the first name on the loan card, above), the Haifa-based chess coach and player, who was the trainer of most of Haifa's chess players for a generation, including Itzhak Bar-Ziv.
Not only that, but I have in my library a book Fischer owned--in this case, Tarrasch's Das Schachspiel:
(The stamp says, "donated by the late Ernst Fischer to the Israeli Chess Association".)
Speaking of Abrahams, he has a rather odd connection to chess in Israel: he is probably one of the few, if not the only, person to write both books about chess and a book about Israel, as can be seen on the fly-leaf of Not Only Chess:
So, to sum up:
By sheer coincidence, I take out a chess book from the library... which was taken out by a local Israeli chess master... who trained other Israeli chess players I know... and another one of whose books I happen to own. In addition, the book itself was written by a chess writer who also wrote a book about Israel.
Serendipity does happen.
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