Unexpected Discoveries

 

Aron Nimzowitsch. Credit: Wikipedia.

Sometimes chess discoveries just happen. A close relative (who shall remain nameless for privacy reasons) regularly visits an old woman (ditto) every second weekend. The old woman keeps speaking about how she had a "famous chess player" in her family. 

Since "famous" and "chess player" are very relative terms - especially when, as in this case, the old woman is from Eastern Europe - I paid no particular attention but asked the relative to ask on her next visit, just in case. 

The relative sent me a message the other day. "He was her grandmother's brother. He had a weird name... something like 'Nimzowitsch'?! Does that mean anything to you?" The relative also mentioned the old women showed her a book the player wrote, in case that helps me out. 

The Second(?) Jewish Chess Periodical

Source and details: see below

Our correspondent, Terje Kristiansen, notes that the latest (February 2025) 64 has a very interesting article about a discovery by Ilya Pechenin: "Unfinished Opening: The First Chess Newspaper in Yiddish." (pp. 86-89). The front page of the first issue is reproduced above, taken from p. 86. 

This seems to be indeed an important discovery. Keats' Chess in Jewish History and Hebrew Literature ends in 1840, and the first newspaper column (as opposed to magazine) in Hebrew, to our knowledge, is from 1888, and this magazine is not that long afterwards. However, as it is from 1913 (as Pechenin notes) another Yiddish-language magazine - which only lasted one issue - must take the prize. 

It was published in New York in 1906, and was published by Charles Jaffe, as discovered a while ago by our frequent correspondent, Moshe Roytman. The details can be found at the end of Edward Winter's feature article about Jaffe, or in Chess Notes #11875. 

More on Chess Caricatures in Israel

Our frequent correspondent, Philip Jurgens, had pointed out a few mistakes in our previous post about caricatures. We use this post to thank him, and to note a few more points about chess and caricatures in Israel. 

Unsurprisingly, in Israel, a country in a constant state of political and military turmoil, caricatures about chess deal almost exclusively with political or military issues, where the players are politicians, generals, or figures representing Israel or other nations. 

For example, from Ha'aretz, we have the following caricature (by Amos Biderman) illustrating an article by Yossi Klein (28 May, 2025) about Netanyahu's political dilemma with the IDF generals (the piece he is holding) and his right-wing coalition partner, Itamar Ben Gvir (on the board):

Or, here, a caricature of a "simultaneous game" by Shlomo Cohen (1 February 2024) for Israel Ha'yom, with Netanyahu playing both against Hamas and Ben-Gvir: 

Shlomo Cohen, incidentally, is apparently a chess player, as the chess motif is often seen in his caricatures. For example, one caricature has Netanyahu as the king and everybody else as a pawn in the Likud conference (Netanyahu's party); another has Trump starting a simultaneous game with the middle east leaders - with the boards set up correctly, the single player playing white, and both the board's orientation and the pieces being set up correctly...