Monday, November 18, 2024

Some Popular Articles about the Jewishness (or Otherwise) of Chess Masters

 

Source: see below

It is sometimes not clear whether a certain player is Jewish or not. That depends on one's definition of "Jewish." Bobby Fischer was undoubtedly Jewish according to Jewish law since his mother was Jewish, but there is no need to restate here his well-known antisemitism. On the other hand, Garry Kasparov is not Jewish according to Jewish law, since only his father was Jewish, but he never denied his Jewish origins. One interesting case is that of Vasily Smyslov, who apparently has some Jewish ancestry but was is not, nor claimed to be, Jewish. 

We have noted before on this blog that Palestinian or Israeli chess writers had a tendency to "convert" any player with any Jewish ancestry to Judaism. But has the accuracy improved in the age of the internet? Is the internet used well or badly?  

As a casual beginning, we have looked at two interesting web pages. One of them is Aish (short for Aish Ha'torah, "the fire of the Torah"), the website of a well-known Jewish education and advocacy organization. It has a surprisingly well-researched general article about Jews and chess, as noted in the link given, from which the picture above is taken. In particular, it distinguishes fact from fiction: it notes that the stories about chess in the Talmud are not true, and that the story of a chess-playing Jewish pope is obviously a legend. Still, it is not fully accurate, for example claiming that Smyslov is a Jew. 

Another website is the humorous Jew or not Jew website. The site rates "how Jewish" a person is not just based on Jewish law but on how Jewish they see themselves, based on their public utterances, as well as the obviously subjective "how much we want the person to be a Jew in the first place" due to their achievement, as their "About the Jew Score" page explains. What is surprising is that this light-hearted website actually has most of the facts about Jewish or non-Jewish chess players correct. 

For example, while "blaming" Kasparov for "losing for a computer" which will lead to a future when "we're all enslaved by machines," they are quite correct about his original name and family origin. They are also openly skeptical about Smyslov's Jewishness, noting that "nobody knows for sure" whether he has Jewish ancestry (not quite true - but at least they do not simply assume he is Jewish). They also note that despite rumors about Spassky's Jewish parentage, that is not the case. 

I have deliberately chosen sites whose chess-related articles make no pretensions of being works in chess history, but are intended instead for readers primarily interested in Judaism, not in chess. It is somewhat surprising to see that just here, where one would least expect it, the actual chess history content is reasonably accurate.  

Perhaps, after all, as Edward Winter notes more specifically about Wikipedia in his most recent feature article, "general" chess information on the internet - while still full of dross - at least shows signs of improving, both in the case of specific good articles and in the removal of mistakes that are pointed out. The problem, notes Winter, is that as always, "chess history suffers when Wikipedia entries make do with references to obviously sub-standard sources." 

One example is the article about Spassky in Wikipedia. While the article has over 140 entries, almost all are from other online sources, without any indication to the reader about those sources' reliability. Compare this to what Winter justly calls a "fine article" about Hugh Myers, where the many references are almost all to the original primary sources - or to Winter's own well-regarded web Chess Notes

Friday, October 4, 2024

Sammy Rubinstein, a Simultaneous Display by his Father, and the Need for Sources

 

Boylston Chess Club shield. Source: see below.

Terje Kristiansen points out to that the Boylston Chess Club posted on its blog (see link) an interesting history of Akiba Rubinstein's family. In particular, it notes that Samuel "Sammy" Rubinstein also was a strong player, with a FIDE rating of 2380, being champion of Brussels in 1949. 

It should be added that while the blog post attempts to give sources and be accurate, some of the information or photos are unsourced and there are some mistakes. For example, Akiba Rubinstein did not visit Palestine twice, in April and May 1931, but only once - in April and May. Also, the photo included as a "simul in Palestine" is - probably - not from Palestine, despite appearing as such in Donaldson and Minev's book on Rubinstein (The Life & Games of Akiva Rubinstein, vol. 2, p. 370). 

As it happens, I was asked about this very photo by Philip Jurgens in an email from 27 September 2021. He noted the similarity of the photo to the following one, which was taken in Palestine. I wrote back that I am skeptical for reasons that may be worth repeating here. Mr Jurgens agreed, but pointed out that my skepticism is circumstantial (i.e., there is no exact location known that proves it is not from Palestine).  

Rubinstein gives a simultaneous display. Source: see above.

Here is a version of my reply to Mr. Jurgens, noting the reason for my skepticism. It had been shortened and edited for clarity.

1. While superficially similar, the photograph here is not actually in the same room. 

2. The people in the photo are dressed in conservative black - not how people would dress in Palestine back then (although the difference is somewhat subtle). Similarly, golden watches and pipes, while not unknown, were not common in Palestine. In short, the Palestine simuls were much more "working class" than this display.

3. All the sets are matching sets, of the same size/making. This would not be typical of Palestine of the time, where it was customary for players in simultaneous displays to bring their own sets. Local chess clubs simply didn't have 50 or 100 matching sets available.

4. The demonstration board in the back seems to be in German or another European language, not Hebrew. 

5. I do not recognize any of the players/personalities in your photo. 

6. In many of Rubinstein's simuls in Palestine, the players were mobbed and assisted by their neighbors/onlookers - very typical of the time in Palestine, but not in Europe (to the great chagrin of Palestine chess column editors, who tried to uproot this "uncivilized" practice...). Here the onlookers are not doing so.
The Boylston Chess Club's blog post is sloppy with sources for its photos. It mentions Donaldson and Minev's book but does not give the exact location of the photograph from it (this was given to me by Mr. Jurgens). 

Why does this matter? Because this is how mistakes are perpetuated. That Donaldson and Minev made a mistake about a photograph in their two-volume work is not the issue. No book is free from mistakes, and their two-volume biography and game collection of Rubinstein is a very serious work with a great deal of original material. But when a photo from their book is posted elsewhere, as in the blog in question, without giving the exact source, then the mistake sticks and becomes a "fact" that is hard to eradicate. 

Saturday, September 28, 2024

"Fancy" Sets

 


On a recent visit to London, I noted that chess sets are popular as gifts in tourist shops; one in the gift shop of The Shard (top), and another in a gift shop dedicated to Harry Potter (bottom).

Does anyone ever actually play on such chess sets, or are they merely for show? 

Graves of Non-Masters

 

Above is a photo I took of the grave of Vladimir Ze'ev Shteinberg, 1965-2024. He is buried in the Ganei Ester Cemetary, Rishon LeZion, Israel. He was not a chess master, but he was a good amateur player, with a FIDE rating of 2180. He also held the Israeli chess rank of senior candidate master, according to his ICF player's page (in Hebrew). 

Graves of chess masters often have a chess theme, as Edward Winter's article on the subject shows. But I am not aware of many graves of non-masters having such a theme. Does any reader know of similar chess motifs on the graves of non-masters? 

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Fischer in Reykjavik... in 1961

 

Source: Chess Life, vol. 16 no. 2 (February 20, 1961), p. 37

Mr. Herbert Halsegger notifies us that Fischer was in Iceland, winning in Reykjavik... already in 1961, in a small round-robin tournament against the Icelandic players, including the GM Fredrik Oalfsson. 11 years before his rather better known victory against GM Boris Spassky in the same location...