My bridge journey actually started when I was a teenager in the 1980s. My late father would ask me to fill in when one of his friends would go for a cigarette (really a calm-down) break.

I persuaded three friends in my Jerusalem high school to learn and we ended up playing quite a lot in our breaks and afternoons. Eventually we found the local bridge club and I ended up playing some local tourneys and once I even went with my dad to a three-day bridge tournament in a resort city in Israel. Once we even won 2nd place in the local Jerusalem annual tournament.

Then life happened, and I haven’t picked up cards since 1990…

30 years later, I am a professor at Cornell University, COVID strikes, and our University president, Marth Pollack, uses a bridge metaphor to describe how Cornell will handle the pandemic (have you seen this email?).

This created a stroke of memory for me, and I suddenly remembered how much I enjoyed playing, and how I completely forgot about Bridge. Since we spent a lot of time at home, I thought it would be a good idea to try again.

I persuaded my wife, kicking and screaming, to learn, and we started playing together “at” the local Bridge club – of course it was all online. I’d never used a computer to play bridge, so it was weird. Funny fact – my wife has never played with real cards. I’ve played quite a lot in the past year, and am really happy about the rank, I’ve never had a rank in Bridge!

I also bought the old books I remembered from my childhood home, which was also a fun trip down memory lane.