Karff ‎in ‎Ha'aretz

Above, from Ha'aretz, September 18th, 1938, p. 4, is a nice photo of Mona May Karff, identified as the 'Queen of American Chess' (with the word 'chess' misspelled...) after her victory with a clean score in the 1938 American women's championship. 

 

Two for the Price of One

 

Here is an odd occurrence. It is often the case that a chess column does not appear in a certain week or day in a paper. But on November 12th, 1937, in Ha'aretz, two different issues of Marmorosh's chess column appeared... both on two different "page 12". A partial explanation is that one of them appeared in the regular (morning) edition and another in the supplemental (evening) edition. 

Marmorosh in Action

 

This photo, from Ha'aretz, January 3rd, 1936, p. 16, shows Marmorosh, identified as "the editor of the Ha'aretz chess column," in action in a simultaneous display. The note also says his result was +28 =2 -3. 

"A Chess Players' Center"

 

On chess's increasing popularity we can learn from the following advertisement in Ha'yarden (August 11th, 1939, p. 9). It notes that the Ya'akov coffee house and restaurant in Tel Aviv has a "first rate kitchen," a "cool and breezy garden" (quite important in Tel Aviv in the summer before air conditioning!), and is a "center for chess players." 

A Pen Portrait

 

Above is a long article from Davar, April 9th, 1939, p. 5, by Y. Straight (ph. spelling). It looks at the various players in the Lasker club in Tel Aviv during the triple tournament held there: the men's, women's, and youth championship of Palestine. The author praises Marmorosh's organization of the tournament (in the "Palga" coffee house next to the beach), and gives pen portraits of both many of the men and the women playing - Dobkin, Czerniak, Kniazer, Porat (then Foerder), and the woman player Zitolenitzka (ph. spelling). 

"A Lousy Book"

Looking for other material, we have by chance found a scathing review of a book by... von Weisl, which we have met here before, published with Asad Bey [ph. spelling] in Germany. The review, by Wolfgang Jungerau [ph. spelling]. The review appeared in Davar on p. 8 of the literary supplement on August 27th, 1938. 

The book is Allah is Great - a popular book about Islamic history. The reviewer notes the book has little that is new, and in fact suspects the book was mostly cribbed from previous popular histories. 'The opening is pathetic, it continues as in a bad movie, and ends with a cheap romantic conclusion.'  The reviewer notes that the book was also published in French, this time only with Bey's name. 'Did Weisel regret the joint effort and wished his name removed?' 

Ouch. 

Jaffe's Primer

 

Charles Jaffe's Chess Primer, a 'spectacularly awful book' according to Edward Winter, was also advertised in Palestine. The advertisement above is from Davar, June 18th, 1937, p. 8. It is a Hebrew translation of the biography from the book. See Winter's article for more details about the rather significant inaccuracies in the description. 

Abdullah vs Storrs

 

The above picture of Abdullah of Transjordan playing chess is well known, but what was the occasion? The answer is found in, of all places, Omer (5 June 1937, front page,) an obscure 2-page paper published in Tel Aviv. The photo, says the caption, was taken when Abdullah played in London with no other than Sir Ronald Storrs, ex-military governor of Jerusalem, when Abdullah was on a private visit. 

Storrs and Abdullah apparently played whenever they met. One time they have met in 1922, they have played 'eight games after dinner while the rest of the conversation flagged.' On the same British diplomatic visit, Abdullah also played chess with British diplomats Sir John Philby and with Sir Herbert Samuel (Samuel won). See Mary Wilson's King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 70.

Lost and Found

 

One of the problems with doing history is that even primary sources are often not 100% reliable, to say the least. For example, starting from ca. 1935, Davar proudly claimed it has a chess column in its paper on Fridays. But there is no chess column. Had Marmorosh, the chess column's editor, quit? Not quite: the chess column moved to Thursdays, but the newspaper's table of content was not updated...