Mah Jongg Moves South

January 28, 2000 21 Shevat 5760

Mah Jongg Moves South
The game is fostering friendships, sisterhood and fun.

Todd Leopold Special to the Jewish Times
Todd Leopold is an Atlanta writer.
tleopold@atljewishtimes.com

Abag of Hershey Kisses and a can of Planters peanuts. That’s how I knew mah jongg night would be held at our house: my mother would go to the supermarket and stock up on snacks. She’d hide them in a cabinet above the oven, a necessity in a house where my two brothers and I were known to wipe out a half-gallon of ice cream in less than 24 hours.
Come mah jongg night, the chocolate and nuts would be placed in dishes in the den and kitchen, and in early evening, the guests would start arriving.
My brothers and I were supposed to be doing homework — or sleeping — upstairs, but we’d find an excuse to come downstairs, interlopers among the clacking tiles and gossipy talk.
We’d say “Hi” to Mrs. Shefsky or Mrs. Krassenstein while making a beeline for the snacks. The game itself, with its exotic Asian tile designs and seemingly inscrutable rules, held an air of mystery; it was like ontology or kabbalah, a secret club that only Jewish women could belong to or understand.
My mother has been playing mah jongg for 35 years. She learned the game as a young mother in New York and brought it with her to the steamy lanes of the “Big Easy,” mah jongg-deprived New Orleans.
When my family moved south in 1972, my mother’s mah jongg tiles were securely packed among her most prized possessions. In didn’t take long for her addiction to spread across, and then far beyond, our West Bank neighborhood.
Once her friends got a taste, they begged her to teach them the game. More than 27 years later, she still plays with almost exactly the same group.
Children have grown, lives have changed, but their mah jongg “jones” remains — a weekly ritual of sorting tiles, exchanging news and small talk, eating Hershey Kisses, and taking away gains or losses that never seem to exceed more than 50 cents.
Say “mah jongg” in Atlanta and that’s the first thing that comes to mind: this Chinese game brought by Jewish women to the Deep South. It’s not exactly the whole story — mah jongg has an international following, and its players are neither all women nor all Jewish — but, like many customs adopted by Jews, it has woven itself into the fabric of Jewish culture.
The weekly mah jongg game has become a tradition which has fostered bonds of Jewish sisterhood, handed down from mother to daughter.

The contest
Of the 23 tables set up in a classroom on a rainy Wednesday night at East Cobb’s Shirley Blumenthal Park, 22 are filled. That’s 88 mah jongg players — a record for this, the annual Atlanta Jewish Community Center Mah Jongg Tournament. Tournament coordinator Sue Coughtry says the AJCC was expecting about 70 players for its 10th annual competition; they had to cap entries at 92, with more clamoring to attend.
The room is filled with the familiar sounds and images of mah jongg. There’s the clack of the tiles in the center of the table, the calls of numbers and suits — crack, bam and dot; winds, flowers and dragons — the bowls of pretzels and M&Ms, and the pensive study of the National Mah Jongg League’s official card, which lists the many hands worth points in the game.
The game has been described as “gin rummy with tiles” — the idea is to group similar tiles in certain combinations to match those on the card.
When a hand is made, the player calls out “Mah jongg!” The winning player earns points — or money, depending on where you’re playing — from the other players based on the value of the hand. The AJCC participants play five games in a night; the tournament will stretch over six weeks, two in January, two in February, and two in March.

Sociable chatter
Jews being Jewish, the room is also filled with the hum of sociable chatter, questions about brilliant children and birthdays and fabulous trips to exotic places, which is as much of a draw as the game itself.
“It’s more than a game,” says National Mah Jongg League President Ruth Unger in a phone interview from New York. “The game is a tool. It allows you to bond and create a social feeling. It’s a network and a support group. Mah jongg is a very social act.”
Once upon a time, mah jongg, like good Chinese food, was an endeavor vigorously pursued by educated Chinese. One theory suggests it was invented by Confucius to help teach his philosophies; even the name mah jongg, which means “hemp bird,” was said to relate to the great philosopher, who was allegedly fond of birds.
Whatever its origins (and whatever the English spelling — there are several variations), the game had become firmly entrenched in China by the turn of the 20th century.

Shanghai
At that time, as noted by mah jongg historian Jim May (creator of the Mah Jong Cyber Museum, http://members.aol.com/mahjongmuseum), the game was introduced to Westerners in Shanghai’s English clubs. One of its fans was Joseph P. Babcock, a Standard Oil Company executive stationed in China. He copyrighted some simplified rules, put English numerals on the tiles, and started importing mah jongg to the United States in the early 1920s. The game became a national craze.
Like good bagels, it took mah jongg a while to arrive in Atlanta. Sue Coughtry, a Marietta resident, has been playing for only two years, but she’s long been familiar with the game. “My mother played mah jongg,” she says. “I think everybody’s mother played mah jongg.”
In its early years, the National Mah Jongg League spread the gospel of mah jongg by attracting members — often at Jewish organizations — each of whom would form their own local league. Individuals would then buy the distinctive yearly mah jongg cards. (Today, a card costs $5.)

Tzedakah
The national league, a not-for-profit organization, would pay a rebate to local groups based on their membership; the rebate would then be donated to charity. It was a principle of tzedakah (righteousness) which helped everybody: the national league found more players, the local groups earned money, charities received donations, and everybody played mah jongg.
The National Mah Jongg League still works this way, but membership was stagnant for years. “At the onset of the league, it had representatives and branches, but the work demands a lot of time,” says league president Unger. Moreover, the generation that came of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s — people now in their 30s and 40s — disdained mah jongg as a game their mothers played.
And their grandmothers. In 1923, at the fad’s peak, mah jongg sets were the sixth-biggest export from Shanghai. The sets, from the simple to the elaborate, sold from a dollar to $1000. American game companies got into the act; mah jongg was so popular that it’s said to have saved Milton Bradley from bankruptcy.
But the craze, like the stock market of the time, saw its bottom fall out. Not too many folk were eager to play mah jongg in the depths of the Depression. The game hung on through the efforts of two disparate groups: the Wright-Patterson Officers Club, a group of players stationed at the Dayton, Ohio Air Force base of the same name, and the National Mah Jongg League.
The league was formed by several New York City mah jongg enthusiasts in 1937, and it is through this group that the game became associated with Jewish women — most likely because its founders were just that, Jewish women.

Younger players
Recently, however, the demographics have begun to shift, as younger women pick up the dots and dragons. “My sense is we lost a generation,” says Unger. “But now I see granddaughters playing, saying ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’ ” League membership now stands at about 200,000, she says.
The AJCC players — 86 women and two men — fit the trend. Many players appear to be in their 20s and 30s; just as many could be their mothers or even grandmothers.
And like the old hair-care commercial — “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on” — the game seems to grow geometrically. Once one person starts playing, all her friends and family tend to pick it up, too.
Nancy Hallerman, 31, has been playing for four years. She got involved, she says, one day when she and her friend Monica Jacobs were sitting in Jacobs’ yard.
“My grandmother had played, but I didn’t know anything about the game,” the Marietta resident says. “Monica suggested to me that we start a game. My mother-in-law taught me, and I’ve taught my sister-in-law, my mother and my father.”
Coughtry, after her late start, has since taught her daughter, daughter-in-law, and son to play the game. She’s also gone to people’s houses and shown them the ins and outs of mah jongg.
“I just love the game,” she says. “Every hand is totally different. You never know what you’re going to get.”
The league’s demographics also show that many non-Jews have begun playing the game. People are attracted to mah jongg for a number of reasons, says Unger; mah jongg web site creator Jim May — a non-Jewish St. Louis construction company project manager — says he was first drawn to mah jongg because of the intricate tile and set designs. But, often, there is a Jewish connection.

‘Clack clack’
Dorris Denny, a travel agency employee from Smyrna, first heard of the game when she was traveling in Ireland, of all places. While in a Dublin Chinese restaurant, she heard the clack-clack of mah jongg tiles and asked her brother what the sound was.
On hearing his explanation, she decided she was going to start playing.
Back home in Pensacola, Fla., she learned from a friend — also not Jewish — at a beauty shop. The two treated themselves by taking the National Mah Jongg League’s annual cruise. “We were the only two non-Jewish ladies on board,” Denny laughs.
When Denny moved to Atlanta in the late ‘80s, she didn’t know a soul. One way of meeting people, she decided, was to find a mah jongg group. So she put an ad in the logical publication –the Atlanta Jewish Times –and received a half-dozen responses. She still plays regularly, and has even taught her husband.
Despite talk of teaching mah jongg to sons and husbands, one thing nobody can explain is mah jongg’s lack of appeal to men. There are only two men in the entire AJCC tournament.
Mark Balser, a five-year mah jongg veteran, shrugs when asked if he feels out of place. He plays with a mixed group, he says, and learned the game through friends and parents. It is enough, it seems, that he enjoys the competition.

Cultural patterns
Perhaps the answer is in family and cultural traditions. Men teach their sons how to play poker or pinochle; women learn bridge, and — in Jewish families — mah jongg.
Poker games are stereotypically thick with cigarette smoke and alcohol, and the chatter is laden with crude slang, bad locker room jokes, and demands to “Shut up and deal.”
Mah jongg games are lighter affairs: if they’re played for money, the sums can be counted in coin, not paper, and the talk is friendly and supportive.
As Unger says, it’s a kind of support group. “We were our own shrinks,” she says of her mah jongg clique. She’s received thousands of letters from women over the years, women who started playing mah jongg as young newlyweds and still play as graying grandmothers; their regular game has been a constant companion through children, divorce, tragedy, joy.
“They go through every stage of life together,” she says. “People become comfortable with each other, become friends with each other. It’s very special.”
Unger believes the tiles have something to do with this sociability, and it’s hard to disagree. After each game of mah jongg, the 152 tiles are placed in the center of the table face down and mixed up.
Together the four players put their hands in the center and move the little white or yellow rectangles around. The click-clack is soothing, and there’s something elemental about the motion; it’s not unlike softly kneading dough.

Osmosis
That intimacy may be facing a challenge. Like so many things nowadays, the National Mah Jongg League is putting mah jongg on a web site. One can’t quite imagine clicking a mouse to be the same thing as clacking tiles, but it may help to grow the game.
Still, says Unger, the old-fashioned way isn’t going anywhere. People will get together to have a game and teach it to their friends and children.
“We’ve never marketed mah jongg. We’ve never advertised,” says Unger. “It is something handed down from generation to generation.”
That’s something Robin Hait knows first hand. The New Jersey-born player, 35, says she learned mah jongg “through osmosis”; her mother played every week, and her set is one handed down from her grandmother. Mah jongg is something she has in common with her family and other Jews.
“Wherever you find a community of Jewish people, it’s something the women can relate to,” she says of the game.
Hait now has three young children of her own. When they get old enough, she says, she’ll teach them how to play mah jongg. “I’m going to keep the legacy going,” she says. “It’s a great game.”

Mah Jongg At A Glance

What:
Mah jongg is rooted in Chinese games dating as far back as 1000 C.E.; today’s version dates from 1850.

Who:
Standard Oil executive Joseph P. Babcock brought mah jongg to the United States in 1920. Today, the National Mah Jongg League, founded 1937, has more than 200,000 members.

Where:
Check out the competition at Atlanta’s 10th Annual Jewish Community Center Mah Jongg Tournament at Shirley Blumenthal Park. February 9 and 16, March 1 and 8

For more information: On the Web look for:
    * The National Mah Jongg League (http://www.nationalmahjonggleague.org): Official site for the national organization.
    * The Mah Jong Cyber Museum (http://members.aol.com/mahjongmuseum): Historian Jim May’s site, featuring history, rules, photos of vintage sets, and articles about the game.
    * Exclusively Mah Jongg (http://www.exclusivelymahjongg.com): A Columbia, Md.-based store selling an entire range of mah jongg paraphernalia.
    * Worldwide Mah Jongg (http://www.mahjongg.com): A catch-all site that offers comprehensive information on the game.
    * Internet MahJong Server (http://mahjong.real-time.com): This site allows players to compete online against other players from all over the world.