A Scrabble Club for Jerusalem!
The Jerusalem Scrabble Club was founded on April 5, 1983, by rated North American Scrabble player Sam Orbaum ז”ל. He had moved to Israel a couple of years earlier and, finding no organized Scrabble, arranged a tourney in Tiberias. Sara Schachter ז”ל, then 67, was one of those who attended. “We must have a Scrabble Club in Jerusalem!” she said.
The fledgling Club was provisioned by player Roz Grossman ז”ל, who arrived in Israel with a suitcase full of surplus Scrabble sets she’d collected at tournaments in which she’d played in the States. The Club grew rapidly and became the flagship of the Israel Scrabble Players Association (ISPA) and its network of clubs. At its height, the ISPA numbered 11 clubs, with the Jerusalem club always the largest and most active.
Biggest Scrabble Club in the World!
As of the end of Season 68 (October 25, 2016): 1,700 sessions have been played at the Club, and we have averaged 49.6 players per session. This gives us the right to call ourselves the biggest Scrabble club in the world! This is all the more remarkable considering the demographics: Jerusalem is a city of only 800,000 people, with English its fourth language, after Hebrew, Arabic and Russian.