Chess in Israel, Early 60s -- What we Can Learn from one Page

Photo: A. P. 

Above we see a picture from Itzhak Bar-Ziv's collection. It is the inside title page of the book he won in a youth ("noar", נוער) tournament, back in 1961. A few notes:

1). The book was given, as a joint 2nd-3rd prize, to Itzhak Barzovski. Bar-Ziv (lit. meaning something like "the son of the shining") is the way he changed his name into an Hebrew one. This was quite common for Jews to do in Israel at the time, much like it was common for immigrants to the USA to change their name to an English one.

2). The book has the Israeli Chess Association's Ex Libris on it. Apparently they couldn't afford -- or didn't bother -- to buy the winners of the tournament new books 

3). On the other hand, they didn't mind giving the winners books actually signed by the author -- in this case, Samuel "Sammy" Reshevsky (probably during his visit to Israel in 1958). 

I find it hard to decide whether the chess association, giving as a prize a used signed book, were being overly generous or overly cheap...