Samuel Reshevsky, a world champion in chess, is being kept out of a national chess tournament scheduled for this week-end because the tournament will begin tomorrow at sundown and end Saturday at sundown. Reshevsky is an Orthodox Jew who never plays on the Sabbath.
The tournament, at West Orange, N. J., is being co-sponsored by the U. S. Chess Federation and the Cabin Chess Club of West Orange. Frank Brady, business manager of the Federation, said today that there is no discrimination against Reshevsky, declaring that “many of the players are Jewish.” He said the schedule will not be altered to accommodate Mr. Reshevsky.
Mr. Reshevsky, saying he felt the schedule was “a personal insult,” pointed out that, in all the years he has been playing, he has never been faced with breaking the Sabbath, “not even in Russia.” He became world’s chess champion in 1935.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
