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| Source: Ha'aretz, 21/3/1924. , p. 3.See also below/ |
A frequent corespondent had brought to our attention the following note in Ha'aretz, March 21st, 1924. It shows the first live chess game in Palestine took place, not in April 1924, as previously stated in this blog, but about a month earlier, on March 20th, in Tel Aviv, as part of the Purim celebrations in Tel Aviv. The report adds that the live chess show was seen by 'about 10,000 spectators' - among them 'a few thousand Arabs, who came from Jaffa and the nearby villages, and filled the streets'.
This, if accurate, is significant considering, first, the entire population of Tel Aviv at the time was only a little more than 20,000 (according to Dalia Manor's article, 'Art the the City', in Azaryahu & Troen (eds.). Tel Aviv: the First Century : Visions, Designs, Actualities) and Jaffa at the time was about 30,000 (according to Wikipedia's Hebrew-language page. This means that about 1 of 5 of the population came out to see the game!
It is also an early example of chess being used for joint Jewish-Arab entertainment, if, in this case, the occasion was actually "Jewish" (Purim).
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