A Chess Set Made in Hiding

 

Source: Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Mr. Herbert Halsegger notifies us of a new exhibit in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews: a chess set made in hiding by Pola Najder during the war. The details are in the link above. 

Yemenite Metalwork Set

 

Our frequent correspondent Terje Kristiansen had sent us photos of the following interesting chess set. It is, to the best of his collecting friend's knowledge, an example of Jewish Yemenite sculpturing in metal wire. They ask why the king and queen seem identical. 

It seems likely that the answer is one of two: either the set is for decoration so the exact replication of distinct pieces was less important, or the artist, presumably a Yemenite Jew from Israel and therefore likely an observant Jew, didn't want to sculpture the traditional cross on top of the king. 

Edited to add: as Mr. Ole Drønen, the collector, and others noted in a correction to me, one can in fact tell the difference between the king and the queen, and the cross has little to do with it. It is simply a French Régence set, which has no cross on the king. Dronen then adds:

Here are two pictures that maybe show the difference between the king and the queen better. The piece to the left is the king... There are many other variants of the style, and they were made in many countries in Europe and for a very long time...But Régence pieces became much less common when Staunton pieces became the international standard in 1924. 

The style was also used in other parts of the world for a long time, especially in French influenced areas. Kings with a cross is primarily connected to Staunton sets. Also other styles could have a king with a cross, but most other European and English styles normally featured kings without a cross.

We thank Dronen for the additional information and the correction.

"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? 

Schahmuseum

The Chilean museum of pre-Colombian art. Credit: wikipedia.

Mr. Halsegger notifies us of the Chess Museum in Switzerland, which is well worth a visit. It has many Jewish-ralted items, such as a Jewish-themed glass chess set and a set created in Auschwitz. 

Chess Gift

Credit: Jewish Museum, Vienna

The above chess set, a gift to captain William H. Barker, was presented in 1947 to him by those whom he took care of in a DP camp after the second world war. It is found on the Facebook site of the Jewish Museum in Vienna, as Mr. Herbert Halsegger notifies us. 

Mosheh Oved

 

Source: Chess Review, November 1948, cover.

Mr. Herbert Halsegger sends us the following interesting photo of a Jewish collector of antiques - including chess. According to page 2 of the same issue, the person in question is:

Mosheh Oved was quite an interesting person. He wrote an autobiography, Visions and Jewels (London: Ernest Benn, 1925), and three items in his collection - not the chess set in the picture, alas - eventually found their way to the British Museum. It is remarkable that in his autobiography he spells his name based on the Yiddish pronounciation of his name, that is, "Moysheh Oyved." 

The Lewis Chess Set and More

In London and Oxford, we visited the British and Ashmolean museums. Below are photos of the famous Lewis chess set (ca. 1200) and another chess set from ca. 1500; note the shape of the rooks. 

Marmorosh's Book

Source: Ha'Boker, Feb/ 16th, 1945, p 6

When was Marmoroh's primer published? A frequent correspondent to this blog found the details (the exact publication date is not in the book itself). It was published by the Barlevi press, Allenby 57, Tel Aviv, in 1945. The ad notes that the same publisher, who also sold educational toys and games, will sell the book with a special discount to buyers of their chess sets. It notes (probably correctly) that this is the 'first chess primer', presumably in the sense of the first one published in Palestine. 

Odd Sets

Credit: Personal Collection

A close relative, on holiday in Safed, Israel, sent me these two pictures. Decorative chess sets of army X vs. army Y are common (French vs. English, Elves vs. Orcs, etc.) but I admit I never saw a Hassidim (white pieces) vs. Mitnagdim (black pieces) before, juxtaposing the two main groups of ultra-orthodox Jews. In the bottom picture, there is a more abstract set, which apparently is a green(ish) army of flowers doing battle against a white one. 

The pieces of both sets are made of wax, and even have wicks -- i.e., they are in fact candles. The reason is that they both sets are display pieces in a specialty candle factory -- Safed Candles. A Hebrew-language review of their store has many pictures that show the store's interior, complete with a Noah's ark made completely of wax. 

The New Chess Square in Be'er Sheva's "B" Neighborhood

This is the new (Dec. 2017) chess square in Be'er Sheva's Schuna Bet -- "B" Neighborhood. The video is brought to our attention by a frequent contributor to this blog, and is to be found on Be'er Sheva's Official City YouTube Channel.

Edited to add: it is named after Eliyahu Levant, the late chess organizer and activist (as well as strong amateur player) in Be'er Sheva, who made it Israel's chess "capital", the city with the highest percentage of grandmasters in the world. 

Chess in High Places

Photo credit: A. P.

Above is a photograph of the De Haar Castle in the Netherlands. On a recent tour there I have found out -- unsurprisingly -- that the owners had had, in (one of) their living rooms, a nice chess set:

Photo credit: A.P. 

The set is arrange in the array, and, for once, with the right bottom square being white.

Chess In the Cyprus DP Camp

Photo Credit: see below

Our frequent correspondent Moshe Roytman notifies us that the Yad Va'Shem collection includes a machine for making chess pieces and a set of pieces made by it (above) that belonged to Holocaust survivors who donated it to the museum.

The web page tells (in Hebrew) the story of Isaac and Israel Rot and their cousin Aryeh Klein, holocaust survivors who were caught as illegal emigrants to Palestine by the British in 1946, and sent to a Cyprus holding camp until 1948.

They were bored, and a 'chess master' who was another inmate offered to teach them the game if they will get him a set. They started by carving stones from an abandoned cemetery, but then hit upon the idea for "industrial production". They made the lathe from a pair of skates (!) bought from one of the other inmates, and started producing chess sets and selling them to British soldiers as souvenirs.

The web page is in Hebrew, but has many photos of the three at work. Israel made the pieces on the lathe, Aryeh carved their features, and Isaac made the boxes. The identity of the chess master is not given

More about Politicians and Chess

Both Pictures: credit Moshe Slav and Slav Inc. 

The current Israeli PM, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, is a chess fan, or, at least, has a chess set at home and was photographed playing chess, in particular with his father; see 'political leaders and chess' in this blog. In the above official Israel Chess Federation photograph, he is posing (apparently in the Prime Minister's office), next to a special chess set: the 'Jewish chess' set made by Slav Inc.

as the details in the photo below shows, it is set where the Christian symbols of the traditional Staunton set (a cross on top of the king, a bishop's mitre for the bishop) are replaced by Jewish ones -- i.e., the king is crowned with a star of David, the queen with a menorah, the knight becomes a lion (an old symbol of Judea), and the rook has the ten commandments on it. The open hand on the bishop and pawn seems to be a hamsa, a stylized amulet against the evil eye, which is technically not of Jewish origins but very common in Jewish folk art, especially among oriental Jews.

(One can click on the pictures for a larger version).

An enlarged section of the second picture above.

The Set

I had promised in "Chess and Gefilte Fish" to load pictures of the chess set discussed there as soon as possible. Well, the owner of the set had kindly sent me pictures of the chess set. It is a beautiful, obviously Russian-style set, from early in the 20th century. It was made in Russia or the USSR (the set has cyrillic markings) but there is no exact date. Can any reader solve the mystery of the set's maker?

Chess for Gefilte Fish

Gefilte Fish. Credit (public domain photo): www.wikipedia.org. 

One would hardly expect a Jewish chess history blog to be complete without a link of chess history to that most Jewish of all foods -- gefilte fish. How could there possibly be a connection? It is rather more dramatic than one would imagine.

Simcha and Shula Moretsky  were married for many years until Simcha passed away recently. They were the parents of a good friend of ours. Among their possessions was an old, beautiful chess set -- by its looks, ca. 1920s or earlier. Where did they get it? Shula sent her the following mail, which he forwarded to me for publication. I translated it and (very) slightly edited it.

After the first bombing of Warsaw in 1939... Simcha, his sister, and his mother had managed to smuggle themselves to the USSR by crossing the Bug river, and lived in a while in Brest-Litovsk. The refused a Soviet citizenship and were therefore expelled at the end of 1940 -- on rafts -- to Komi, USSR, not far from the capital, Syktyvkar. 

That city was a place where Stalin and Trotsky exiled political prisoners since 1927 [sic -- a reader notes this is slightly inaccurate. Trostsky lost power by then, and the town was probably used as an exile place already in Tzarist times.] So apart from "anti-socials"  there was in the city also an intellectual elite... most of the labor camp's workers did work on the Syktyvkar river, cutting trees and sailing them down the river. Where there's a river, there are fish! ... he and his sister remembered their mother making gefilte fish and would barter it for needed items. It is possible they got the set from one of her customers then -- sometime between 1941 and 1943.

His father got ill with tuberculosis and his mother with kidney disease. As incredible as this sounds, they both got released from the work camp [in 1943] for medical reasons [! - A. P.] and moved to Voronezh, where they both worked for the railway administration, as it was an important railway center.

The city is on both sides of the Voronezh river, and, when she was not hospitalized or in treatment, his mother would get fish and make gefilte fish. People didn't have money to pay, as there was a terrible shortage of everything, so they bartered. One client taught him to play the violin. It is possible another taught him chess and left his set with them as payment. ... at any rate the set is in our family's possession at the very latest from the beginning of 1944. 

The set is still in their possession. From its looks it is from pre-revolutionary Russia, and probably a treasured possession of the chess teacher or worker who traded it for gefilte fish. I will post a photo of it as soon as I can.

The Lewis Chessmen



Photo: A. P.

On a recent trip to London, I have visited the London museum -- and the Lewis chessmen. It is an extremely impressive set -- as it would be, being made for a king -- and well worth visiting, as is, of course, the London museum itself for many other reasons.

Tourist-Trap Chess

Photo: A.P.

Photo: A.P.

Here we have something slightly different. Jerusalem's old city is full of little bazaars where Arab shopkeepers sell various knickknacks to passing tourists. Apparently "authentic" oriental chess sets are very popular.

Needless to say the actual Arab version of chess -- shatranj -- would not have queens. Instead, it would have a vazir, literally "counselor", roughly equivalent to "prime minister", or the shah's chief adviser. It certainly won't have any bishops!  What we really have here are simply Staunton-design cheap wooden sets.

Dark Right Bottom Corner Mafia Strikes Again

Image credit: www.flickr.com. OK, I'll stop here, or else this blog will have nothing but such images.