Winning moves

Even as the girls sit listening attentively to Chess Chevra instructor Marfa Esaulova, known to her Prospect Park Yeshiva students as Morah Marfa, it’s clear that students are itching to start battling on the green and tan vinyl chess mats laid out in front of them. Bowman’s eyes survey the room as Esaulova demonstrates an opening move known as the Queen’s Gambit — sacrificing the queen’s pawn to gain better control of the center of the board — nodding appreciatively as one girl offers a solution to the problem posed to the class.

As the games begin and students face off against each other, Bowman’s eyes light up as he moves from board to board, quizzing the girls about the three ways to get out of a check situation, suggesting potential moves and exclaiming animatedly as one player loses her queen in an ill-fated maneuver. Without a doubt, Bowman is a long way from his first encounter with chess, when he was nearly the same age as these fourth-graders, his journey to launching Chess Chevra spanning many years and thousands of miles.

Josh Bowman, who had earned the rank of national master during his off time in yeshivah, ultimately came full circle, combining his love of chess with his two other passions — education and the Jewish community. Oddly enough, it was the pandemic that paved the way for Bowman to launch his career, the realities of the lockdown prompting him to start teaching chess on Zoom.

“It was at the very beginning of Covid, when you couldn’t go out at all, and I reached out to someone in Philadelphia whose kids had taken chess with me previously and asked him if he wanted me to give them lessons on Zoom,” recalls Bowman. “He asked if we could turn it into a group lesson, since his kids hadn’t seen their friends in three weeks.”