Chess Grandmaster Boris Gulko is coming to Omaha!

I am about to pick up Chess Grand Master and Jewish Hero Boris Gulko from the airport. 

One of the great privileges of being the Rabbi of a city like Omaha is that over the last 10 years I have had the privilege of meeting and spending time with some truly amazing people, including Natan Sharansky, Michael Oren, and of course Warren Buffett.  

Yet I cannot ever remember being as excited to meet someone as I am right now!  Boris Gulko is truly a great Jewish hero and it is such a great honor to host him this Shabbos on Good Shabbos Nebraska!  The feeling right now is indescribable.  Everyone MUST come to meet this great man this Shabbos at 10am at Beth Israel!

The following is another excerpt from the book Searching for Bobby Fischer: The World of Chess, Observed by the Father of a Child Prodigy.

“In 1978 Anna and I applied for emigration to Israel. I wanted to live without chess management, but chess management

 didn’t want to live without me.” Gulko laughed quietly. “Until then we both were paid for being chess players, but after we applied for emigration all income stopped. They didn’t invite me to any tournaments, even those in this country. For two years I was not allowed to play a single game. For two years I waited. It was destroying me. Anna was in the same situation. We went on a hunger strike in 1980, and after that I was allowed to play in the Moscow Open. I suppose they didn’t consider me a threat to win, because it was a very strong tournament and I was out of practice.”
To the dismay of the authorities, Gulko did win, and during the awards ceremony at the Central Chess Club, he asked to speak. A hush fell over the gathering as he addressed the Soviet Chess Federation and asked that Victor Korchnoi’s wife and son be allowed to leave the Soviet Union to join him in exile. After the speech players and guests paused to shake Gulko’s hand.
Volodja Pimonov witnessed Gulko’s courageous speech at the Central Chess Club. “Afterwards, I drove the judge of the tournament home,” he said. “The man was trembling, because authorities were already saying that it was his fault since he was the judge. After such a debacle they must find a scapegoat.”
In 1982 the Gulkos tried to publicize their situation by demonstrating outside the interzonal tournament. “Anna and I waved posters saying, ‘Let us go to Israel.’ We were arrested and thrown in jail for the night. A few days later I returned to the tournament, which had been moved to the Sport Hotel for increased security. This time I did not intend to demonstrate; I simply wanted to watch the chess. There was a large crowd outside the hall hoping for tickets. A large man with the face of a dog came over and kicked me and smashed me in the face. Then a policeman appeared, the dog man said that I had beaten him, and I was arrested again. The crowd got to see a more interesting show than inside the hall—a former champion of the Soviet Union being kicked on the street.
“A month later we went on another hunger strike. After twenty-two days the doctors told Anna that she must eat or she would die. I had nothing but water for forty-two days. We did it to gain the attention of chess players around the world. But they couldn’t help us.
“My savings are gone now. For a while we received parcels of clothes from Jewish organizations in the West, but they no longer come. I think they are impounded by customs. The clothes were useful because I could sell them in a secondhand shop for money to buy food. Our financial situation is critical, but the biggest pain is not being able to play. When we applied for emigration we were among the strongest players in the world. These years have been a creative death. My life now is mostly waiting. I’ve lost many years. I don’t know how many more I have left.”
Later Boris played a game against Josh, and then demonstrated several of his recent unpublished games. The calmness of his voice gave way to passionate chess talk and even peals of laughter. “You have to be a grandmaster to understand,” said Boris, moving the pieces; at this moment all of us could feel the sublime importance of chess in this deprived little home. “I conceive of chess as an art form,” he said, showing us an original combination with two knights while Anna watched him as if he were reciting poetry. “I will only play in a way that interests me,” Boris said. “For me chess is finding ideas, beautiful, paradoxical ideas.”
Ten minutes after we waved good-bye to Gulko in the parking lot, we were stopped by the police. Volodja whispered that we must not speak English. He was questioned at length about a supposed illegal turn before we were allowed to go on. Volodja said he was certain they knew we had been at the Gulkos’. “You won’t be allowed to leave the country with your tapes and film,” he warned. “If they are confiscated, it will be very bad for me. "

World's Greatest Chess Master to Appear on Good Shabbos Nebraska

This Shabbos will be the most historic and memorable episode ever of Good Shabbos Nebraska!  We have the honor to host Boris Gulko.

Along with Natan Sharansky, Boris Gulko is among the most famous of all Russian refusniks.  He was the chess champion of the Soviet Union in 1977, but because he was a Jew he suffered persecution, incarceration, and even physical abuse by the KGB.

Besides being one of the greatest chess players of all time, he is a piece of modern Jewish history, as well as one of my own personal heroes.  It is with great honor that we welcome him to Beth Israel as a guest on Good Shabbos Nebraska.

On Sunday he will play a simultaneous game against the 20 best players in the state of Nebraska at Beth Israel.

On Shabbos at 10 am Grandmaster Gulko will tell us about his experiences and also why he thinks that Jews have proven historically to be so adept at chess.

Even if you are not a chess enthusiast, you will not want to miss this episode of Good Shabbos Nebraska.

For the next week I will be publishing on my blog some excerpts about Grandmaster Gulko from Fred Waitzkin's  Searching for Bobby Fischer: The World of Chess, Observed by the Father of a Child Prodigy (pages 98-107)

More than ever I wanted to meet Boris Gulko. Still, I was apprehensive when I received a call on our room phone in the hotel saying that a meeting with “our friend” had been arranged. What if the meeting was a setup? If we ended up in jail, what would happen to Josh? 

In a few minutes Volodja’s small car pulled up, and he gestured for us to crowd into the back seat. Next to him in the front sat Gulko. 

Volodja nervously checked the rearview mirror. “Boris has just won the semifinals of the Soviet championship,” he said. I was surprised, because there had been no report of his participation in newspapers or chess magazines, and most players and chess journalists I had asked said that they didn’t know what had become of Gulko. “Oh, I am allowed to play a few games a year,” he said, “but they are never reported. If I win a tournament they only write who came in second or third.” Gulko said that he had played Kasparov twice during the past three years and won both games. Almost no one beats Kasparov, and such news would have been on television and on the front page of Pravda were Gulko not a refusenik, one of the living dead.
Boris Gulko is a distinguished-looking white-haired man of medium height with a small pursed mouth and a gentle face. He appeared to be fifty-five or sixty. His speech was serene, almost in the manner of an Eastern mystic, except for a sharp laugh that was filled with irony. At times there was an eerie disparity between his subject and his tone of voice. For example, he would describe a period of intense physical and emotional trauma—a hunger strike or a brutal beating—almost in passing, as if he were beyond feeling pain. I was shocked when Gulko told me that he was thirty-seven. He smiled. “If you don’t eat for forty-two days you too will look sixty,” he said.
I asked if he’d been following the match.
“I would love to go, but Krogius won’t sell me a ticket,” he said, referring to the head of Soviet chess. “Perhaps I would be an embarrassment. Two years ago I got in touch with Karpov about my problems, but he refused to help.”
Even during the early stages of the Karpov-Kasparov match there had been discussion among Russian intellectuals, grandmasters and journalists about whether the event was a legitimate contest. In several of the early games we had attended, Kasparov had advantages and had failed to follow up on them. Later in the match, he aroused the suspicion of grandmasters and chess journalists around the world by offering draws in games in which he seemed to have winning chances. Miguel Najdorf said that Kasparov’s play was inexplicable and a disgrace. “I wouldn’t offer draws in such positions, and I’m seventy-five years old,” he said. In the Times of London, chess columnist Harry Golombek wrote: “Perhaps Kasparov has been warned not to play well and has been given to understand that the consequences for him and his family would be disastrous if he did.”
I asked Gulko if he was surprised by Kasparov’s poor play and whether he thought it was possible that the challenger had been ordered to lose the match because the Central Committee didn’t want a Jew to be world champion (Kasparov's father was Jewish - RJG). “It is impossible to know this for a fact,” Gulko answered. “Perhaps Kasparov is just playing poorly. He is an emotional young man. But in Russia chess is political and it is difficult to refuse if you are asked to throw a game. If they don’t want a chess player to play, like me or Bronstein, for example, they’ll stop you for years.