Tag Archives: Annelise Heinz

MAH JONGG AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Last week I received the following article three times from different people. The article is from an online daily inspirational newsletter, Jewniverse. The author, Temim Fruchter, according to Wikipedia, “is the drummer in The Shondes, an indie punk band from Brooklyn, NY.  Fruchter is outspoken about being an Orthodox-raised Jewish musician and opposing the occupation of Palestine. In 2007, Heeb Magazine listed Fruchter as one of the Heeb 100. Fruchter’s writing has also been published in a number of venues. She is a regular contributor to Tom Tom Magazine, a magazine about female drummers and is a former blogger for AfterEllen, the online magazine.”

It’s a brief article that should elicit many conversations and further interest in how our beloved game became known as a Jewish game. What’s your opinion on why the game became so popular among Jewish women? However, please note that Mah Jongg does NOT date back to Confucius!

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 HOW MAH JONGG BECAME JEWISH

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By Temim Fruchter

How did a game that graced ancient Chinese tables (in the company, some posit, of Confucius) come to grace contemporary Jewish tables (in the company, perhaps, of babka and Slivovitz)?

While books, documentary films, and traveling museum exhibits have puzzled over Mah Jongg becoming such a Jewish craze, no one has reached a definitive answer. Could it be connected to the formation of the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) by a group of Jewish women in 1937? Or to its popularity among Jewish wives during World War II while their men were away? Or the game’s prominence at Jewish bungalow colonies in the mid-20th century? Or else, as NMJL president Ruth Unger believes, that selling Mah Jongg cards functioned as a fundraising source for synagogue sisterhoods and Hadassah chapters?

Whatever the reason, the game has remained a fixture in the Jewish world ever since it came to the U.S. in the 1920s. And even today, says, Annelise Heinz, of Stanford University’s Department of History, the game is enjoying a Jewish renaissance. “Many of the Jewish daughters who once rejected Mah Jongg are now returning to the game as a way to connect with their Jewish identities and rekindle memories of their mothers.”

MEMORIES OF SUMMER AND MAH JONGG

The Mah Jongg Doctors, and more specifically, Barbara, blogged a beautiful piece about summers in the Catskills and learning how to play Mah Jongg. Her article marks her 50th year of playing the game and I thought you would enjoy this sweet remembrance of days gone by…

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Campers by day…Mah Jonggers all the other times!

A few days ago I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to speak with Annelise Heinz. She is working on a doctoral dissertation related to the history of Mah Jongg in the US from 1920 to 1960.  We had a lengthy conversation about my memories of Mah Jongg …the game itself, the people who played it, and life as it was at that time.

And, like a bucket filled with fish hooks, as we pulled out one memory it linked to another. It is amazing to me that there are times I cannot remember the items on my shopping list as I enter the supermarket, but, clear as day, I was able to pull up names and events from 50 years ago.

The summer of 1964 kicked off as we packed up our car and headed to the Catskills for our traditional bungalow colony experience in Mountaindale, NY. And, always the last item to be slipped into a narrow space left in the trunk was my mother’s Mah Jongg set, because, summertime was Mah Jongg time. My mother and her friends would play Mah Jongg for hours every afternoon while we were in day camp, and then again in the evenings when we were happily catching fireflies or playing ring-a-levio.

After day camp we would stand around the Mah Jongg tables and watch as our moms played their last hands so that they could then turn their attention to preparing dinner.  We felt so lucky to be able to pack up the sets for them, always making sure that the tiles matched evenly in the box so we knew all of them were accounted for.  Soon we began to play around with the tiles before we packed them up. Building walls and picking tiles, putting them on the Mah Jongg card, and flippping them up just like our moms did.  We practiced that tricky move many times!! We even picked and threw, naming the tiles (which we must have learned from years of watching and listening) and racking the new ones. The only thing we didn’t do was actually try to make a hand because we didn’t know how. Our faux Mah Jongg games were wonderful!!

And then, I’m really not sure if it was their idea or ours, but our moms told us that they would teach us how to really play.  There were times we each shared a rack with our mom as she explained how to read the card, pass the tiles, and form a hand.  Other times, as we became more competent and independent, one mom would stay with us to guide our play. It was such a seamless, natural learning experience for us all! We looked for every opportunity to play and practice. I was totally hooked…and I remain so to this day.

Here’s to the next 50 years of Mah Jongg.

And…thank you Mom!!
~ Barbara

A DOCTOR OF MAH JONGG!

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Where are these ladies from the 1920s now? Or these ladies from, most likely, the 1950s?

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Unless these ladies are your relatives (or you!), there is probably only one person who knows where they are today…and that would be Annelise Heinz.

Read on… Continue reading →