This spring the NY Times reported:WOODY ALLEN joked in ''Annie Hall'' that after he was thrown out of New York University for cheating on a metaphysics final, his mother, a ''high-strung woman, locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of mah-jong tiles. ''This illustrates not just the lengths to which a distraught Jewish mother might go to inflict guilt, but how much a staple mah-jong was (and is) in Jewish-American life -- up there with flanken, seltzer and schmaltz (at least in my family ). Mah-jong is a game of chance and skill similar to gin rummy, in which each of four players is dealt either 13 pictographic tiles of different suits. The players then take turns drawing and discarding tiles, with a goal of making four or five combinations of tiles, or melds, and one pair, or head. It was a favorite at Catskill resorts and played incessantly by Eastern European immigrant Jewish women in the 1930s. The National Mah Jong League was formed
in 1937 by a group of German-Jewish women, inviting players to convene and standardize the rules . I, myself play in a weekly game with 6 friends. We rotate in an out of the game while simultaneously sharing news of our lives. Are you intrigued?
Starting October 21st, Temple Shaaray Tefila will host Mahjong Thursdays from 11:00-2:00. If you want to learn, we will have beginner tables, if you know how to play and are perpetually looking for a fourth, come by and there will always be a game waiting for you.
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