SCRABBLE Around the World

Lots of Room at the Inn: The Jerusalem Club

by Paul McCarthy

A decade ago I interviewed the irrepressible Sam Orbaum, who founded the Jerusalem Club, now the Sam Orbaum Jerusalem SCRABBLE Club, in 1983. Sam wrote for the Jerusalem Post and was, until his death at age 46 in 2003, the driving force behind what he felt was the largest SCRABBLE club in the world. This is a look at that club.

Yes, they have SCRABBLE in Israel. There are nine clubs, but the Jerusalem club is the flagship. Its members play in English and use the "Official Club and Tournament Word List," which aligns them with the North American SCRABBLE community. Even though English is the third most spoken language in this city of 450,000, the Jerusalem club packs them in.

Orbaum ended up playing SCRABBLE in Israel by accident. He was a new arrival, had played in Montreal, Canada, and so was consulted about a tournament the Jerusalem Post (his employer) and the Galei Kinneret Hotel in Tiberia intended to hold. They had gotten four hundred responses to an announcement and didn't know what to do. They contacted the NSA and Orbaum's name came up. He reluctantly organized the event, it went well, and the next logical step seemed to be a club.

Orbaum expected twenty-five or thirty word enthusiasts, but got forty-five and never looked back. At one point, these word warriors were so committed to the game that even the Gulf War was only an inconvenience. Over a six-week period, while Americans were glued to their TVs watching for incoming Scuds, anywhere from twenty-seven to forty-six Israelis (depending on the week) were glued to their chairs watching for incoming bingos. At first they fled to a gas-proof room to wait out the Scud alerts. Then, because the government didn't want large gatherings during the threat, the Civil Guard closed them down, calling the club a "public Menace." But they would not be denied. Within three weeks they had their playing room gas-proofed and the club reopened. During alerts "we just whipped on our gas masks and kept playing,” said Orbaum, “although the masks did add a new dimension to announcing scores and making challenges."

Sam was a great recruiter. Once players were in the door, he wanted them to have fun. He felt most newbies were uneasy, some downright scared. So he greeted them with something like, "I'll bet your nervous, right? Well, don't worry, at this club you don't have to be good, you have to be nice. Are you nice?" That broke the ice, relieved the tension, and when they smiled, according to Orbaum, "I knew I had them."

But it didn't stop there. Everyone in the club knew that retaining new players was a priority, so most would go out of their way to say hello. Orbaum would even interrupt his first game to kibitz the newcomer. He would compliment some move even if it wasn't wonderful. "After that kind of treatment," claimed Orbaum, "many of them couldn't wait to come back." There's more.

If cutthroat competition was what you wanted, you could find that at the Jerusalem club, but not if you were a newcomer. With four divisions, a new player never had to go up against a heavy hitter. In fact, some never would. They played to have a good time and would never leave the bottom division. That was okay with Orbaum. On that first night the bottom division tile pushers knew they were important to the club and had an important role to play. It was their job to ease the neophyte into the group; no clocks, word lists, or niggling rules.

But there was noise. In most North American clubs, most of the time, there isn't much. Not so at the Jerusalem club. "We're a noisy people," said Orbaum. He was bothered by it at first but then came to view it as "healthy noise." "It's a sign of strong social bonding." The idea was to have an enjoyable evening. If novices caught the bug, that was fine too. If not, there was the socializing, the love of words, and some mild mental stimulation. Orbaum made room for the competitive newcomer too. If someone wanted competition, he encouraged it and goosed the player along. The person would become a "club project" who was showered with advice and attention.

Although Orbaum called it the noisiest club in the world, he didn't tolerate disruptive behavior. If a new player looked like trouble, he'd actively discourage him or pair him with a tough customer to cool his ardor. When disputes occurred, he'd take the players into the hall to talk it out. Now and again this led to long chats with difficult players, and when all else failed, he twice threw people out on their ears. One was a whiner, who constantly accused opponents of cheating. The other made verbal threats.

On the face of it, you might expect real world differences to show themselves over the board, in what is probably the most diverse club around. Not so, according to Orbaum. Even with Sephardi (Eastern) and Ashkenazi (Western) Jews, secular and orthodox Jews, Arabs until recently, and members from the United States, Romania, Germany, Poland, Iraq, India, and Sudan, the only serious division, according to Orbaum, "was pro and anti air conditioner." For example, there was the time that Aryeh, a right-wing settler, arrived from reserve training in uniform, toting his Uzi. Only Mohammed, a Palestinian, was available. They played. There was no problem. "In that room they had everything in common," said Orbaum. "People leave their differences at the door."

To keep them coming through that door, Orbaum instituted various inducements. The playing year was divided into two twenty-five week sessions, which ended in the crowning of two divisional champions. To make it all work he kept meticulous records and posted the most interesting ones. As of October, 2001 the club had played 135,554 games, scored 47,495,329 points and hosted 1,530 different players. All this information is on the club web site, along with the history and structure of the club, and various pieces of club lore.

This kind of enthusiasm draws crowds. Between 1983 and 1999 the club averaged fifty-two players a week, not counting the week Orbaum got married, when eighty tileheads made it to the dinner bash and post-meal word fest. To give some sense of the club's per capita turnout, if the Denver club, where I play, could do as well, we would have some two hundred players per session.

This approach to club building could be called the "open door" model. The key, according to Orbaum, is a good-sized bottom division in which the novice can feel at home, have a lot of people to play, and not be hopelessly outclassed. He can remain there indefinitely or move up through the ranks. On top of this, an effort is made to forge social bonds and give newbies more reasons to come back than just playing the game. To ease the transition there are no clocks, obscure words or nitpicking rules, at least at the start.

The club carries on under the able leadership of David Litke. With close to one hundred members, the web site at a www.jsc.org.il/jsc2/jsc.php lists seventy-four players in four divisions with enough games under their belts to qualify for the official stat sheet. The club meets every Tuesday from 7:30 PM to 11:30 PM at Beit Ha'am Municipal Library, 11 Bezalel Street.

Paul McCarthy plays in the Denver and Boulder clubs. He is the author of Letterati: An Unauthorized Look at Scrabble and the People Who Play It. The book is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and other booksellers.