Noam Vitenberg grew up in Norway, the child of Russian immigrants, in a home where Judaism was present but not observant. The family visited the local Chabad House for Shabbat, sent Noam to a Jewish kindergarten and Hebrew school, but the rhythms of Torah were not yet his own.
What was his own, almost genetically, was chess. His grandfather was a candidate master. The other grandfather held the rank just below. His father had been one of the finest checkers players in the Soviet Union before quitting at eighteen, having won the Soviet under-18 championship at just fourteen. Chess was in his blood.
By thirteen, Noam was Norwegian champion for his age, representing his country at the European youth championships. At fourteen, he won the Norwegian under-20 championship. At fifteen, he earned the master title in Norway and Scandinavia. He was, by any measure, extraordinary.
And then, at eighteen, living in Ithaca, New York, he walked into the Chabad House on his college campus and asked the rabbi a question that had been persistently pressing him: Prove to me that Judaism is true.
They spoke for months, questioning, debating, learning.
Ultimately, Noam embraced Judaism.
He went to study in Yeshiva Temimei Darech in Tzfat, Israel, and became a rabbi. And in the back of his mind, an idea began to form: a chess Chabad House. A place where the game he loved could open doors to Jewish souls.
But first, he told himself, he had to walk the walk. He went back to chess.
It was a disaster.
Tournament after tournament for half a year, he would outplay his opponents, then collapse. As if, he says, someone had put a curse on him. "That someone being myself."
As he describes it: Chess had once carried him. Now it was crushing him.
"To say I was sad would be an understatement," he reflects. "I was destroyed."
He walked away from chess. Buried it. And the dream of the Chabad House went with it.
What followed was a genuine existential crisis. In Chassidic teachings, every descent exists for the sake of a greater ascent. Noam couldn't see that yet. He had given up on chess, given up on the dream, and was left holding the wreckage.
He enrolled in a yeshivah in Petach Tikva, drawn by its central location, and somewhere on the periphery of his thoughts, by the fact that Israel's chess tournaments are held nearby.
On Friday afternoons, he and his fellow yeshivah student, Shalom, would visit locals and offer them the opportunity to put on tefillin and pray.
There was one man, Michael, who regularly declined their offer.
One Friday, Noam was not feeling up to it. He stayed home and wrote a long letter to his mentor (22 pages, as it turned out!) before realizing that most of the worries he'd written weren't real. He never sent it.
Around four in the afternoon, Shalom called. He was with Michael. Did Noam want to come play chess?
"I did not want to play chess at all whatsoever," Noam says. "Chess had caused me so much pain that the last thing I wanted was to play it again."
But Shalom had an idea. Michael and Noam would play chess. If Noam won, Michael would put on tefillin.
Noam ran.
The two men sat down across from each other. They spoke in Russian, and something warmed between them. Michael Polyakov grew up in Minsk, Belarus, and moved to Israel in 2009. Back in Minsk he had been a candidate master.
Michael made an early mistake. Noam won.
And Michael, who had declined tefillin every time before, rolled up his sleeve.
A friend who had come to watch the game put on tefillin for the first time as well.
Noam asked Michael what putting on tefillin means to him.
"I have been to a synagogue before and when I served in the army there were some religious encounters. I think it means to me that I feel closer to G-d now."
He paused, and then smiled.
"Play chess, believe in G-d!"
That wasn't the end. Most Fridays now, when Noam and Shalom pass Michael and his friend playing chess in the same spot, they stop and put on tefillin.
All because of chess.
For Noam, it was something he hadn't dared to believe was still possible.
"I honestly hated chess after it caused me so much pain," he says. "A big part of me wanted to never play chess ever again. Never talk about it even, preferably. But every descent is to propel you higher. A part of me knew that at some point, all of the hours I spent playing and training chess would come to holy use. It reignited within me the dream of the Chabad House."
It happened in Petach Tikva. Petach Tikva, which means the opening of hope.
The descent was real. The pain was real. And the ascent — one Friday afternoon, on a street corner, over a chessboard — turned out to be real too.
Who knows, maybe one day there will be a chess Chabad House after all.
