New World Chess Champion

Boris Gelfand. Is it necessary to say he is a Jew? An Israeli Jew? The world's intellectual elite is collecting here. American Jews should think over where they want their children and grandchildren to grow up. I am happy with the decision I made in 1976 to stay in Israel (I came as a tourist). It is improbable that in Argentina I could have the daughters I had. All of them are working and studying very seriously. My daughter in the Technion is studying Architecture, and I can see that she is being trained very well. I have one daughter in Katza, a Kever Benjamin high school. I find the teachers much stressed and harassed by the management and are pushed to demand too much from the students. Classes are from 0800 till 1530 and they get lots of homework. Over 95% of Katza students graduate, but they are only the third or fourth in the country. The Ostrovsky School of the neighboring town of the Phoenician Glass Factory is number one. Katza is number one in Israel in the percentage of students who volunteer for frontline fighting units. Ostrovsky is number one in fighter pilots. They must be very patriotic, I dont know, I only see them studying too much. Today I realized that my daughters maintain themselves, pay their rents, pay their tuitions and refuse to accept money from me. I also left home at 16 and never accepted money from my parents (I always made much more I needed) but conditions were favorable in my time in La Plata. On the other hand, I think environment does not affect people like me. I am indifferent to people's opinion and self-motivated. I grew up in the lowest lumpen barrio of Mataderos in Buenos Aires, and till age 21 (when finished the MSc) I used to live in the dirtiest "pensiones" sharing rooms with semi-criminal lumpen. One year I lived in a whorehouse on Calle Nueve esquina 48 of La Plata, the owner was a old Russian Jewess called Boles and later his son entered the building business and became rich. It did nothing to me except to access more sexual experience than middle class Jewish boys, to acquire a lifelong passion for lunfardo (Buenos Aires's thieves language) and for turn-of-century tango, when it was the whorehouses's music. People is shocked by my Spanish, as I spontaneously use expressions typical of jails and not heard in polite society. Also my tastes are unrefined and gross: I like the commonest street food (shwarme be-pitta) and drink the cheapest vodka (Perfect), I like to dress at home, at the office and even at meetings coloured cotton underwear (which I use one over the other, in lieau of shirt), workers blue cotton pants with many pockets and construction workers high shoes (they hold the foot, are antislip and very light). I have fights with my wife who forces me to undress and dresses me up in uncomfortable formal suits. I cannot blame my environment for that.