![\"Judit](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-51621853.jpg\")
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Judit Polgar plays Boris Spassky in 1993. Photo by ATTILA KISBENEDEK\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBy PJ Grisar<\/a> Watching Queen of Chess, Rory Kennedy\u2019s Netflix documentary about the top-ranked woman chess player and her long contest with world champion Garry Kasparov, I was reminded \u2014 of all things \u2014 of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.<\/p>\n It comes down to one moment. In a montage in the 2018 superhero cartoon, we briefly see Peter Parker\u2019s wedding, where he steps on a glass. This one second of film inspired an avalanche of speculation<\/a> that Spider-Man (or at least a version of him) was Jewish.<\/p>\n In Kennedy\u2019s film, we see footage from Polgar\u2019s wedding, where her husband breaks a glass. This is the only clue I saw in the entire film that she is Jewish. We need not speculate if this is the case, as we might with fictional characters with arachnid physiology \u2014 it\u2019s a matter of public record. And it\u2019s a pretty big part of her story to leave out.<\/p>\n As the film\u2019s early moments make clear, Polgar, now 49, and her older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were not instant prodigies, but the result of a social experiment. The Polgars lived in a ramshackle house with wet walls in the workers\u2019 district of Budapest. The country was poor and, in the Soviet era, topped Europe in suicides.<\/p>\n Their father, L\u00e1szl\u00f3, an educational psychologist, was desperate to make a better life for his children, and so he studied the lives of geniuses and alit on the idea to homeschool his daughters \u2014 unheard of in a collectivist country \u2014 and from the age of 5 drill them in chess.<\/p>\n Why chess? Their mother, Kl\u00e1ra, explains in an interview for the film: \u201cVery simple. The chess board, it\u2019s easy to have it and very cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n When his daughters started drawing attention for their early victories, and for decades after as they rose to international acclaim, the press would frame Polgar\u2019s regimen as child abuse; one headline called him a \u201cHungarian Daddy Dearest.\u201d Interviews conducted for the film with L\u00e1szl\u00f3 give the impression that he\u2019s a demanding eccentric, but skip over some crucial context: He was born in 1946 to parents who survived Auschwitz.<\/p>\n L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s father, Armin, lost his first wife, six children and his own parents in the death camp. For someone with this background, family, and survival, couldn\u2019t be taken for granted.<\/p>\n As L\u00e1szl\u00f3 \u00a0told the Jerusalem Post in 2017<\/a>, \u201cbeing a Jew gave me extra motivation to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n Sofia Polgar wrote in her autobiography<\/a> that the \u201cfighting spirit that is running through my veins,\u201d came from her survivor grandparents.<\/p>\n \u201cMy grandparents were the \u2018lucky ones,\u2019 with the numbers tattooed on their arms and nightmares for the rest of their lives,\u201d but who had the strength to rebuild, Sofia wrote, adding that she still has \u201ca bad feeling when seeing train tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n In her 2025 memoir, Rebel Queen<\/a>, Susan Polgar, Judit\u2019s eldest sister, recalls her father returning home from work and finding a letter with no return address.<\/p>\n \u201cInside was a photo of him with his eyes cut out,\u201d she writes. \u201cThere was also a one-page handwritten letter, which he refused to let me read. He only said that it was dripping with antisemitic remarks and violent threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the country Susan sensed that the Polgars were not regarded as \u201creal\u201d Hungarians. The government denied them travel permits and Kl\u00e1ra recalls being woken up by armed police. There were threats to take their children away.<\/p>\n Things changed when, after criticism from the international press, the Polgars were allowed to leave the Eastern Bloc for the 1988 Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece. The three sisters and their teammate Ildik\u00f3 M\u00e1dl triumphed over the Soviets women\u2019s team and returned as heroes.<\/p>\n Judit, then 12, soon emerged as the top female chess player and sought out men to compete against. After becoming the youngest grandmaster at 15 and 4 months, beating Bobby Fischer\u2019s record, she faced world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time in Linares in 1994. She was 17, he was 30. Their contests and (spoiler), Polgar\u2019s ultimate victory over Kasparov in 2001, form the arc of the film.<\/p>\n Buoyed by a soundtrack of women-led rock and punk bands like Tilly and the Wall and Delta 5, Queen of Chess is primarily about the first woman to smash the chess world\u2019s glass ceiling, cracking into the top 10 overall world ranking \u2014 still the only woman to do so \u2014 and defeating the number one-ranked player.<\/p>\n Interviews with younger women chess players speak of her as an inspiration. Kasparov, while he now respects Judit, still comes off as sexist in contemporary interviews with remarks like \u201cone of the typical weaknesses of many female players is that they are panicking if there\u2019s a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n This by itself, is enough material for a film, and Kennedy does an admirable job building suspense using archival video from tournaments and a digital chess board tracking the moves of the match.<\/p>\n What\u2019s fascinating about the omission of the girls\u2019 Jewishness is that Kennedy, a director of a couple dozen documentaries about social issues and historical injustices, and the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and sister of RFK Jr., rightly, acknowledges it as an obstacle in an interview for the press notes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe odds were staggering,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cThey were poor. They were Jewish. They were girls.\u201d<\/p>\n The last factor may well trump the others (Kasparov was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein).<\/p>\n Still, Jewishness continues to play a large role in the sisters\u2019 lives. In 2024, Judit and Sofia played matches in Berlin\u2019s parliament in honor of Israeli hostages<\/a>. Sofia made aliyah in 1999 and is married to Israeli grandmaster Yona Kosashvili. Her parents followed her there.<\/p>\n In the film\u2019s bittersweet final moments, Kennedy asks Judit how she felt being part of an experiment, and missing out on a normal childhood. She takes a while to respond, and does so with a bit of ambivalence.<\/p>\n \u201cI never felt myself being a genius,\u201d Judit says. \u201cI know that the things I could reach, that was definitely like 95% of my work and dedication. And this came from my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n The impetus behind the experiment, to do whatever they could to help their children rise above their circumstances, may be best explained by all that came before them.<\/p>\n In a phone call Thursday, Susan Polgar confirmed that their Jewish history came up in interviews, and acknowledged that a lot was left on the cutting room floor. Within the family, she said, Judit spoke about how this would just be one interpretation of their family\u2019s history.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat people tell me is actually that probably ideal would be to have a miniseries,\u201d Polgar said.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 30, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/R_Q-S01488_MAS_PolgFam_Klara-Polgar-Scanned-Pics-01-copy-scaled.jpeg\")
Judit Polg\u00e1r, Susan Polg\u00e1r and Sofia Polg\u00e1r, sisters who rocked the chess world. Photo by Courtesy of Netflix \u00a9 2026<\/p>\n