Ouch!

Credit: Chesscraft blog

A reader of this blog noted that, contrary to what I was writing for years, the English transliteration of the Israeli journal שחמט is actually Shahmat, not Shachmat. Thank you, anonymous poster -- and it goes to show that, once more, errare humanum est. Now I only have a few thousands of typos to correct...

Vera Menchik Jewish?!

Source: See Below

Moshe Roytman, a frequent correspondent, sent me the following headline, from Unser Express (in Yiddish), Sept. 20th, 1929, p. 15, about 'The Jewish Maiden Vera Menchik, which had Defeated the Greatest Chess-Players in the World'. 

What evidence is there that Menchik was Jewish? Technically it is possible that her father was since Menchik is indeed sometimes a Jewish name: a diminution of "Mann", i.e., "little man", as Jewish Family Names and Their Origins (Guggenheimer & Guggenheimer, Ktav Press 1992, p. 507) notes. But that hardly means all those with that name are Jewish -- any more than all those named, say, Rosenberg are Jewish (Alfred Rosenberg, to name one, was one of the major Nazi war criminals tried in Nuremberg, for example). 

Also, it is possible (technically) that her mother, Olga Illingworth was Jewish -- Illingworth is certainly a British name, from her father, but her personal name is Russian, so it is possible her mother was Jewish despite her father's name. But this seems unlikely as her (Olga's mother) first name was Mary Illingworth.

The most likely explanation seems to be that Unser Express was, simply, misled by Menchik's last name into assuming that she is Jewish, but is it possible that she was in fact Jewish, or "half Jewish" (i.e., on her father's side, which would not make her Jewish by Jewish law)? 

Chess in the Newspapers

The following photo -- given to me by Mr. Gdali Roysman (my spelling trasliteraiton from the Hebrew, I hope I am not misspelling it...) -- shows Davar Le'Yeladim ["Davar for Children"] of Dec. 8th, 1954. It shows yet another early attempt to make chess popular among the young in the mainstream press in Israel:

An interesting Marmorosh Game

Source: Shachmat No. 5 / 29 (Dec. 1964), p. 15

In the following simultaneous game by Marmorosh, an interesting event happened. This game, says the (unsigned) article in Shachmat, was from a simultaneous display in Holon (Israel), 1956. Annotations by Shachmat:

1. Qb3!! Q:f7 2. d:c6!

'An extremely interesting position! Both queens are undefended and threaten each other. The black queen cannot move, due to immediate mate.'

2... Rgf8 3. c:b7+ Q:b7 4. Qe6+ Qd7 5. Qa6+ Qb7 6. Ne6+ 'and wins'.

More on the "Mystery" Tournament...

Source: Shachmat, June-July 1964, Vol. 2 no. 11-12 (23-24), back cover

Having procured, with Alon Gruenfeld's generous help, the 1964 issues of Shachmat, all I can say is -- so much for the "mystery". As I already noted, the games were published in Shachmat in 1964. Above is the back-cover report in Shachmat, and all the games of the international section appeared in full in that and the next three (August - October) issues of Shachmat. There was also a complete crosstable, and that of the Israeli masters' "B Tournament").

I should have known better; I fell into the trap of believing Chessbase and similar online / computer sources are reliable. They are indeed, when it comes to recent (ca. 1990-) tournaments and international events, but not at all when it comes to smaller, historical events that were mostly reported in non-European (or American) sources. This is why Jeremy Gaige's and other archivists' work, such as the multi-volume Chess Tournaments Crosstable (which, alas, I do not have access to) and Chess Personalia are indispensable.

Getting into Trouble

We noted that Adrian (or, in the source quoted, Avraham) Schwarz had played in a tournament when he was a deserter from the IDF, and MPs came to catch him at the tournament; it turns out that the exact tournament was the youth test tournament of July 1963. Schwarz 'registered to the tournament despite the fact that his legal standing vis-a-vis the army's command does not allow him to play or to guarantee his attendance' -- that is, he might be thrown in jail for desertion if caught -- and that 'he is responsible for the disruptions caused when the police terminated his participation', which 'brought chess into disrepute'.

Quite apart from being pursued by MPs, then, Schwatrz had to deal with him severely: a one-year suspension from chess tournaments. That, hoped the ethics committee of the ICF, will 'keep him from loving chess to a degree that causes dereliction of his national duty' [to serve in the IDF].

The sordid details are found on p. 9 of Shachmat, vol. 2 no. 9 (21), April 1964. We are not clear why he is named 'Avraham' (i.e., Abraham) here -- is this due to the common (at the time) practice of changing names to "pure" Hebrew ones, or are we in fact (which seems unlikely given my sources) dealing with two different people?

Chess and Politics, 1964 Olympiad

Credit: Shachmat, vol. 3 no. 4 (28), November 1964

In the "Chess and Politics" file, we add the following photo, on the cover of Shachmat from November 1964, with the self-explanatory title, 'World Champion Petrosian is welcomed by president [of Israel] [Zalman] Shazar'.

P.S.

Shachmat mistakenly put 'October 1964' on the front cover of the issue, despite the fact that it was in fact the November issue; this may well be due to the magazine switching back and forth at the time between "real" print and multi-lite print, and encountered various other technical problems. The new editor (Eliyahu Fasher) warned the readers in advance, in the "real" October 1964 issue (p. 3) to expect such issues.

Chess and Science Fiction

Credit: the Science Fiction Encyclopedia Gallery

We have occasionally noted the connection between art and chess on this blog (see "art" in the labels), and sometimes, note issues not dealing with Israeli or Palestinian chess, but with chess in general.

Here is one common example: chess used as a motif for book covers, in this case, a science fiction anthology, by (according to the SFE) Amabel William-Ellis and Michael Pearson. Indeed, there is even an anthology, Pawn to Infinity (eds. Fred and Joan Saberhagen) about chess and science fiction:

Credit: See link above

The book is a collection of science-fiction related chess stories, and indeed, these stories go back a long way, all the way to Gargantua and Pantagruel, as the SFE entry for 'chess' shows.

Young Problemist

Source: Shachmat, March 1964 (Vol. 2 no. 8), p/ 16

The following problem is not particularly good, admits the editor (Hillel Aloni) of Shachmat's problems & studies section. But -- he adds -- it has a saving grace. The composer, Ron Eisenstein, was... seven years old!

Shachmat adds, on the next page, a letter (written by his father in Ron's name) that he started learning chess in Kiryat Ono at the age of six and a half, with the instructor Itzchak Aloni; won a prize as a solver in Davar's chess column, and continues to solve problems in the newspapers. 

Edward Winter, in C. N. 2184 (also in King, Commoners, and Knaves p. 234) gives a younger problemist -- Elliot Franklin Eichholz, age five (source: American Chess Bulletin, May-June 1917, p. 132), also -- unsurprisingly -- a simple mate in two.

Do the readers know of any other very young composers?

(Highlight below for the solution)

1. Kh6