Sunday, June 28, 2009

An International National Championship

Jews came to Israel, or Palestine, from many countries. In the 1961/62 Israeli chess championship the result was that the players were, in effect, an international team: Jewish emigrants from all over the world, as well as native-born Israelis.

This could be seen in the different languages used to record the moves, according to Eliahu Shahaf's (ed.) book, Alifut Israel be'Shachmat 5722 [Israeli Chess Championship 1961/62] (Tel Aviv: "Mofet" press, 1962), p. 90:
Rudy Blumenfeld - English
Amiel Harel - Hebrew
Zadok Domnitz - Descriptive English
William Potasman - German
Moshe Czerniak - Spanish
Itzchak Aloni - Hebrew
Raffi Ruppin - Hebrew
Zelig Chessakov - Russian
Aveshalon Yosha - Hebrew and Latin [sic]
Yedael Stepak - Hebrew
Israel Gat - Hebrew
Yuval Ron - French
Ya'akov Bernstein - Hebrew
Amir Helman - Hebrew
Yosef Porat - German.
That's from six to eight different languages, depending on what exactly was meant by 'Latin', and whether to count 'descriptive English' notation as a separate "chess language" than 'English' (here meaning algebraic English notation).

2 comments:

  1. הי אביטל
    בלוג יפה יש לך!
    להתראות
    אייבי
    ehudwe@actcom.co.il

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  2. Thanks! Sorry I'm so late in replying.

    It's my "baby"...

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