PHOTO: KEVIN HAGEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bridging the Generation Gap With Chess
Zachary Targoff started an intergenerational chess program with his bar mitzvah money
By RALPH GARDNER JR.
May 20, 2015 8:15 p.m. ET
Zachary Targoff is a better man than I am. I doubt I’d have used all my bar mitzvah money to do what Zach did with his nest egg.
He started a chess program a year ago in April at Dorot, a Jewish social services organization on the Upper West Side that works to make older adults less socially isolated. To that end, and with the support of Zach and his parents, Dorot brings together teenagers and seniors to play chess.
“We used the money I got from my bar mitzvah to fund this program,” the 14-year-old Zach said as he looked around the room where the young and old were hunched over chess boards. His donation paid for staff, refreshments, transportation for the seniors, and chess equipment and training.
“I’m thrilled you’re teaching me chess,” Florence Chasen, 97, told the teenager as she moved her knight two spaces rather than the customary three.
“The knight goes two spaces and then one space,” Zach explained patiently.
A more dangerous opponent was 91-year-old Herman Bomze, who was engaged in a match on the other side of the room and who helped inspire the program. Zach and Mr. Bomze have been playing against each other since before Zach’s bar mitzvah in November 2013.
“I was nervous the first time,” Zach recalled of his formidable opponent. “I expected we’d talk for five minutes about normal things. I knew once we started playing that the game would speak for itself.”
So who wins?
“When I first started playing with him, we would be splitting games,” said Zach, an eighth-grader at the Trinity School. “I thought I’d have to be giving up games.
“As people get older things happen,” he added, choosing his words carefully. “He’ll still win games.”
The players meet weekly during the school year. The timing is different during the summer, explained Judith Turner, Dorot’s director of volunteer services.
“Teens go to seniors’ homes and bring the chessboard with them,” Ms. Turner said. “We were so amazed by the outpouring of interest.”
Zach and Mr. Bomze ended up talking about more than chess. The nonagenarian shared some of his personal history with the boy.
“He told me a lot about his family,” Zach said. “How they came over from Europe. He showed me pictures of his family.”
And as a bar mitzvah gift, Mr. Bomze gave Zach the chess set his father, who didn’t survive the Holocaust, had given him.
“Unfortunately, his father couldn’t get a visa to America,” Zach explained as Ms. Chasen moved one of her pawns straight ahead—a move that would be acceptable in checkers but not in chess. “He was forced to stay in Europe and killed during the war.”
Full article here.