Female Jewish Chess Players to Know Ahead of International Chess Day

July 20 is International Chess Day, and with it comes a chance to reflect on the many Jewish women who have participated in the game and learn from their stories.

While chess has been played across cultures and borders, the commitment to learning required for a player to excel in the game is similar to committing to the study of Jewish texts. Chess is a game of accountability to oneself—when you make a move, consequences will impact you later in the game—and thus requires deep contemplation before each turn to think about how actions will ripple forward. The result is a game where players must learn, grow, and evolve in order to engage in a way. This process mirrors Jewish values of continual growth, reflection, and advancement. While competitive chess in the modern era has been a highly male-dominated space, that has been changing in recent years, thanks to female players who blaze trails for generations to come. Each of these women has unique pathways of strength and resilience, both on and off the board, with a particular dedication required of Jewish women who often were pioneers and trailblazers for others.

Chess legend May Karff may be one of the more well-known Jewish female chess players, becoming the first woman champion of the United States in 1938, though many others have helped break the glass ceiling of the game. Here are just a few of these exceptional women–and the ways in which these queens (pun intended) have created a more accessible game for generations to come.

Early Pioneers

Vera Menchik

Vera learned how to play chess at age nine, after the violence of the Russian Revolution disrupted her life in Moscow. Able to flee in 1921, she resettled with her mother and sister in England, where she struggled to adapt to a very different lifestyle and relatively new language. Chess became a haven for her, without the linguistic barriers of spoken words, and she threw herself in with a passion that helped her rise in the chess world. Her fame and success increased with a victory in the first-ever Women’s World Chess Championship in 1927, followed by successes against numerous male grandmasters in open competitions. Vera paved the way for the popularization of chess among women and broke countless glass barriers as she, time and time again, established that women could be just as good as men in strategic games. Vera was killed in an air raid in London in 1944, just before the end of WWII, but her legacy lives on today in the paths paved for women to participate and compete on the chessboard. 

Isabelle Choko

Isabelle was 12 years old when she and her family were forced into the Lodz Ghetto. There, she first learned to play chess as a way to cope with daily hardships. Her father died in the ghetto, and she and her mother were first deported to Auschwitz, followed later by Bergen-Belsen. Isabelle was saved from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 following the camp’s liberation, revived from starvation that had led her to weigh only 25kg at the age of 16. Her mother did not survive Bergen-Belsen. Isabelle resettled in France, where her uncle lived. As she found a new routine, she became reacquainted with chess, with her skill earning the attention and mentorship of French Grandmaster Savielly Tartakower. She won the French Women’s Chess Championship in 1956 and went on to represent her country in the first Women’s Chess Olympiad, all at a time when the presence of women in chess was relatively new. In addition to her work as a chess player, she was an active advocate for Holocaust education, having been so deeply impacted herself by the Shoah. Isabelle died in 2013, survived by a family that continues her legacy of amplifying the stories of Holocaust survivors. 

Contemporary Champions

Jennifer Shahade

Born in 1980, Jennifer Shahade learned from a young age how to make space for herself when others wouldn’t. In 1998, she became the first woman to win the U.S. Junior Open, followed by victories in the 2002 and 2004 U.S. Women’s Chess Championships. A multi-talented individual, Jennifer has also found success in playing poker, writing novels, and advocating for equity in the chess world by leading a #MeToo revolution in the sport after accusing a prominent coach of sexual assault. Even as chess culture has remained slow to change, Jennifer has continued her advocacy and community engagement through involvement with a local nonprofit she founded called 9 Queens, which focuses on empowering girls through chess. 

The Polgár Sisters: Susan (Zsuzsa), Sofia (Zsófia), and Judit Polgár

László and Klara Polgár had three girls, Susan (Zsuzsa), Sofia (Zsófia), and Judit, between 1969 and 1976, and were determined to make each of them into a prodigy. Before age four, each of the children was introduced to a strict homeschool curriculum of chess lessons. Devoutly Jewish, László is said to have drawn inspiration from the intensity of Talmud study in creating the rigorous chess education schedule. Susan, the oldest of the sisters, became an international master of chess in 1984, followed by becoming an international Grandmaster just seven years later. Sofia reigned as the under-14 female champion in 1986 and became an international Master in 1990. She never reached international Grandmaster level, instead pivoting to focus on artistic pursuits in her career as an illustrator. Judit, the youngest of the three, shattered records by becoming the youngest international Grandmaster (across both genders) at the age of 15 years and 4 months. Determined not just to play other women but to establish dominance across both genders in chess, Judit dedicated her career to playing in traditionally male-dominated tournaments. In 1994, she was the first woman to win a “Strong Grandmaster tournament” that included men and women. She went on to be the only woman ranked in the top ten of all chess players internationally in eighth place.