Saturday, January 31, 2026

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

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