A one-of-a-kind initiative to establish a ‘Grandmaster Chess Research Project’ is taking shape at Israel’s University of Haifa in collaboration with vice world chess champion Grandmaster Boris Gelfand. The program is set to develop a novel academic approach to the skills and culture of chess-playing that can in turn contribute to social and scientific development.

By Fania Oz-Salzberger (Faculty of Law) and Amos Oz

Published by Yale University Press, November 2012

Why are words so important to so many Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism’s most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips.