No other game or sport has been so significantly shaped and influenced by Jews as chess. The list of Jewish (and Jewish father) chess grandmasters – the highest title awarded by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) – is long, as is the list of Jewish world chess champions (54 percent).
Outstanding Jewish chess players such as Garry Kasparov, Bobby Fischer and Emanuel Lasker have gone down in chess history as legends.
Most recently, the reigning World Chess Champion GM (Grandmaster) Magnus Carlsen was challenged by the Jewish GM Ian Nepomnjaschtschi (“Nepo”) at the 2021 FIDE World Championship in Dubai, but Magnus Carlsen managed to defend his title and retain the crown of World Chess Champion.
Nevertheless, Carlsen said before the championship: “Today Nepomnjaschtschi is one of the few who can defeat me.”
According to ChessBase, the Israeli city of Beer Sheva, the “capital of the Negev”, is the city with the world’s highest rate (as of 2005) of chess grandmasters per capita – one GM for every 22,875 inhabitants!
These statistics have led many people to speculate whether there is some special reason why so many of the greatest chess players were or are Jewish.
Some attribute the outstanding success of Jewish chess players to the intensive study of the Talmud, cultivated in Judaism for thousands of years, and compare the way of thinking in chess with Talmudic thinking. Indeed, chess and the Talmudic approach have some things in common:
Every situation is examined and analyzed down to the smallest detail, and creative solutions and ways out must be found within a limited framework of laws and rules.
According to Gerald Abrahams (1907-1980, British chess player and author), a love of learning, determination and a gift for languages (due to migration) also contribute to success.
But the history of chess in Judaism begins much earlier:
The liberal scholar Aharon Yellinek (1820-1893) claims that chess was invented by none other than King Shlomo, the wisest man of all time, and that he played the “Game of Kings” against his royal colleagues.
While this legend sounds nice, and King Shlomo would certainly have been capable of inventing this brilliant game, this fact is not mentioned anywhere in traditional Jewish literature, and it is very likely that Yellinek composed this work based on his imagination for entertainment purposes only.
While chess is not associated with King Shlomo in traditional Jewish sources, it may be mentioned in the Talmud:
In Kesubos (61b) a game called “Nadreshir” is brought into the discussion. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki 1040-1105) identifies the game mentioned as “Ishkekish”, an old French word for chess.
According to Rabbi David Korinaladi (18th century Italian rabbi and author of the Mishnah commentary Beit David), it was invented even before the Mishnah period. However, there are numerous historians and rabbis who, for various reasons, believe that neither Rashi nor the Talmud mean chess.
One person who definitely knew this game and even mentioned it in his work is the famous Spanish scholar and philosopher, Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi (1075-1141), the author of the Kuzari:
“For the same reason, it is unlikely that the weaker chess player will beat the stronger. There is no such thing as luck or misfortune in a game like chess. For the rules of the game are quite open to study, and the expert will always be victorious”. (Kusari 5:20,52)
The same is true for us, says Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi, man has a free choice between good and evil, and it is incumbent upon man to use his reason to make the right decisions, rather than relying on luck.
Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi’s son-in-law, the poet and philosopher Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1167), was a passionate chess player, so much so that he wrote several poems about chess.
In his poem “The Song of Ishkuka” he describes the rules of the game and the movement possibilities of each piece. Some of the rules in modern chess are based on the writings of Ibn Ezra.
There has been much debate in the halachic works of the last few centuries as to whether it is permissible to play chess on Shabbos, and some halachic authorities held that it is inappropriate and possibly even forbidden. However, Rabbi Yehoshua Neuwirt states that it is permissible as long as the laws of borer (sorting) are observed.
Interestingly, in the Chabad movement, chess even has a spiritual significance:
After the Chabad Hasid and professional chess player Samuel Reshevsky became the US chess champion in 1946, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe, revealed to his followers (including Samuel Reshevsky) the spiritual meaning behind this mysterious game. Chess symbolizes the ongoing battle between Keduscha (holiness) and Sitra Achra (Yezer HaRa – the evil instinct), and the different pieces represent different instruments used in this battle.
In Chabad, there is a custom of playing chess on “Nittel Night” (the night of December 24th), and there is a famous picture of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (6th Lubavitcher Rebbe) and his son-in-law Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (7th Lubavitcher Rebbe) playing chess against each other.
Chess has been with mankind for thousands of years. In the last two years, thanks to the Covid-19 epidemic and the series The Queen’s Gambit, the game has grown in popularity and, according to chess.com, some 11 million new users have registered since March 2020.
Chess has always held a special place among the Jewish people, and the extraordinary attention paid to chess by medieval scholars is a mystery, as is the great success of Jewish chess players over the past two centuries.
What is clear is that it may be some time before there is a Jewish chess player at the top of the chess world (again).
*This article appeared first in the Jerusalem Post
