For many young Jews, mahjong is the game of our grandmothers. The game is so ubiquitous among Jews that, despite its origins in 19th-century China, one could almost think it’s a Jewish creation. For me, this relationship to mahjong—or “mahj,” as my grandmother called it—was based around a pool in Fort Lauderdale. The image of four Jewish women sitting under an umbrella playing mahj all afternoon is a defining childhood memory.
Mahjong was introduced to the United States in the 1920s, marketed fictitiously as an “ancient” Chinese game, and it took off among the upper class. This fiction has lasted in North America, where, to this day, the National Mah Jongg League emphasizes the game’s antiquity. The game exploded in popularity within the Jewish community after the founding of the League in 1937 and soon spread through Jewish vacation spots like the Catskills. Eventually, mahjong left its upstate New York milieu for Jewish neighbourhoods across North America, where women like my grandmother learned the game.
My grandmother’s introduction to mahjong came shortly after the birth of my father. As a stay-at-home mom, mahjong allowed her and the other women she played with “[to get] out of [their] own apartments, [...] put [their] babies in their carriages, and leave them in the bedroom.” Mahj became “[her] connection to other women.”
Her experience mirrors the relationship many Jewish women had with mahjong. It was how they got to know their neighbours and schmooze with friends. Mahjong players formed communities and developed their own culture and lingo like “going pie.” (You go pie when you’ve racked up all the debts you could afford and signified from that point forward, you could not lose anymore money.)
Historian Annaleis Heinz emphasizes that “[Mahjong] becomes a way to bring a little piece of leisure and female community into increasingly suburban lives.” It allowed women like my grandmother to leave the house, exist in a space with other women, and take a break from the expectations of domestic life.
Community has remained an essential part of the game in the eighty-or-so years since the founding of the National Mah Jongg League. Philanthropy has been an organizing principle of the league since its inception, as it involves itself heavily in Jewish community groups. This has helped further transform mahjong from a gambling game to one primarily aimed at building community.
In spite of mahjong’s role in building relationships, for many Jewish women, it has remained a very competitive endeavour. For example, since moving to Florida over twenty years ago, my grandmother has played with the same group of women who take their game so seriously that there are now two games: the relaxed one, where schmoozing is the primary goal, and the competitive one, wherein talking is not part of the game.
From urban to suburban, from the Catskills to Florida, mahjong has defined and embedded itself in Jewish communities, creating a space for Jewish women beyond sometimes isolating domestic lives. Even today, whether in Fort Lauderdale or Côte Saint-Luc, you will likely find Jewish women pushing the tiles.
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