Was famous chess master Boris Spassky’s mother Jewish? Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time (p. 36) says that Boris Spassky himself said she was not, but I understand The New York Times Report on the Chess Match of the Century maintains she was.
Sincerely,
Baruch Pelta
Google reveals this:
http://www.jinfo.org/Chess_Champions.html
Apparently Spassky says that he isn’t. Works for me!
could be lots of reasons he said that, soviet pressure maybe as somebody pointed out to me… It’s quoting the book I referred to.
Maybe, but there were Soviet Jewish grandmasters; Tal, Kasparov, and so on.
Also, he’s continued to deny it even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Spassky, in 2001, signed the “Letter of 5000” (which he later disavowed), which was a letter calling Judaism “anti-Christian”, accused Jews of committing ritual murders, and urged the Russian government to ban Jewish organizations.
Also, according to Evgeny Gik, at a party in the 1990s, Spassky said “Everything is good in Russia, but I don’t know how the Russian people can have allowed so many big-nosed people into government.”
Now none of that means that Spassky’s mother wasn’t Jewish. In fact, if she was, his anti-Semitism would make him more likely to deny it.
Pardon the hijack, but it’s not worth it’s own thread: Bobby Fischer’s body is being exhumed to perform a paternity test. Maybe there’ll be a rematch while he’s out and about.
I’m sorry, but that just plain sucks! Bobby was the chess idol for me back in the 60’s and I admired his quirkiness until he went apeshit, but I cannot fathom anybody wanting to claim kinship, especially parenthood, to the nutcase.
Next we’ll get similar cases for Jeffrey Dahmer – if there aren’t already some in the works (I confess to not trying to find them!)
Was Bobby Fischer ever actually diagnosed with a mental condition?