Mah-jongg's New Generation of Tile-Philes

By Rachel Beckman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 9, 2008

Click. Clack. "Two bam!" Click. Clack. "Did you hear about Nancy? She's getting [whisper] a divorce." Click. Clack. "Mah-jongg!"

The sounds of mah-jongg -- tiles hitting the table, neighborhood gossip, peculiar lingo -- are unmistakable. In the past, mah-jongg aficionados were also easy to identify. Stereotypically, two types of people played the game: Jewish and Chinese grandmothers.

The game is still rooted in those cultures, but slowly and quietly, mah-jongg players are diversifying.

"It's every age, sexuality, religion. We have an Episcopal priest who comes," says Jean Graubart, 58, who coordinates the twice-weekly games at the D.C. Jewish Community Center.

Graubart says the open games on Tuesdays and Fridays are "extraordinarily tolerant" of new players, but she encourages true beginners to take a class. The center offers mah-jongg classes sporadically, including one that starts Tuesday. In December, the center will host its first mah-jongg tournament, with timed games, refreshments and prizes.

Mah-jongg is played with a set of 152 tiles, which used to be made out of ivory or bamboo but are now usually plastic. The tiles are engraved with colorful numbers, pictures and Chinese characters. The game, which the National Mah Jongg League says originated in China around 500 B.C., resembles gin rummy in that the goal is to collect the right combination of tiles to create a winning hand.

At its heart, mah-jongg is a social game. As with poker, there are formal classes and tournaments, but it thrives among friends in living rooms.

David Horowitz, 43, coordinates a mah-jongg group that has been meeting since January. His friends gather every first and third Saturday night for dinner and a game (or four). Everybody takes a turn hosting.

"I like the renegade aspect of it," he says. "Everyone gets together for poker. This is different."

On a recent Saturday night, the group met in Sara Friedman's Takoma Park apartment. Friedman fed her four guests a big dinner of pasta, beef, stuffed peppers and fruit salad before anyone touched a tile, and she kept the wine flowing.

Friedman, who with Horowitz made up the Jewish contingent of the mah-jongg party, remembers her mother playing with girlfriends when Friedman was growing up in New York City. When her mother died, one of the few things Friedman kept was her mother's set of tiles.

Horowitz, who wore a black T-shirt with pictures of three mah-jongg tiles on it, has played for three years. He first joined a group through Bet Mishpachah, a D.C. congregation for gay and lesbian Jews. That group grew out of a Capital Pride parade float on which congregants dressed in drag as mothers and aunts playing mah-jongg. Horowitz left that mah-jongg group a year and a half later "due to excessive competitiveness," he says.

Another Takoma Park group member, Arlene Pangelinan, 43, was familiar with Filipino-style mah-jongg but has since learned the American rules. She moved to the D.C. area from Hawaii last year and joined the group to meet new people. Pangelinan has played only three times with this gang, but they have already figured out her "tell." "I learned last time that sometimes she purrs when she's excited, sometimes when she's frustrated," Horowitz confides.

An online version of mah-jongg has introduced the game to even more players. Purists such as Horowitz, who admits he can be a little dictatorial when it comes to the rules, don't consider playing on the computer to be true mah-jongg. "It's important to learn to play in standard rule set," he says.

Janine Carlson, 37, who joined the Takoma Park group to "eat, drink and be merry," agrees. "When I tell people I play mah-jongg, they say, 'Oh, I play on the computer.' But that is totally different. That's more solitaire."

Sara Schwimmer, 31, runs the Web site PopJudaica.com and is among the new generation of enthusiasts. She plays a version of mah-jongg solitaire that she downloaded for free to her iPhone.

PopJudaica.com specializes in cultural Jewish products and in the past four years has stocked a variety of mah-jongg paraphernalia, including a travel set, magnets, oven mitts, aprons and cheese spreaders. An umbrella printed with mah-jongg tiles is a big seller, Schwimmer says.

"I knew that mah-jongg was huge among Jewish grandmothers, but after [the products] were put up on the site, I noticed they were attracting a younger demographic," she says. "I think there's definitely an element of retro."

The opportunity to get to know people and have a sense of community is what attracts people to the games at the D.C. JCC. Graubart says one elderly woman played at the center for three years, and when she told fellow players that she had cancer, they offered to take her to get chemotherapy and cook her meals. After she died, her son sent Graubart an e-mail.

"He told us that his mother had died and what made her happy living here was his family, his kids and her mah-jongg group," she says. "There are connections that are made at the mah-jongg table that go way beyond the tiles. People really take care of each other."

Get in the Game

Take part in free open mah-jongg games Tuesdays from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. and Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. A three-session mah-jongg class ($75) starts this week, meeting Tuesdays from 7:30 to 9 p.m. A tournament ($22) is planned for Dec. 7 from 2 to 5 p.m. D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. 202-777-3268.

http://www.washingtondcjcc.org.

Look Who's Playing

Think mah-jongg is only for old fol ks? These sightings in pop culture suggest otherwise:

· Queen Latifah, right, plays mah-jongg on her iPod Touch, though she calls it "the muh-JONG game," according to a recent article in the New York Times. When she found out about the original game, she said, "They got real tiles? I got to get that."

· There's an indie dance-music band called Mahjongg, based in Chicago. Founding members Jeff Carrillo and Hunter Husar picked the name in part because of the Jewish and Chinese "cross-cultural referencing" (the band incorporates sounds of African, Native American and funk music, among other genres), Carrillo says in an e-mail. However, the quintet doesn't play the game: "We're all more chess people."

· Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys plays mah-jongg and is known for being a stickler about the rules.

· Ang Lee's 2007 film "Lust, Caution" and Amy Tan's 1989 novel "The Joy Luck Club" (and resulting movie) include scenes set around the mah-jongg table.

· And, finally, this classic reference from Woody Allen's 1977 film "Annie Hall": "You know, I went to New York University, and I was thrown out of NYU my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final. You know, I looked within the soul of the boy sitt ing next to me. And when I was thrown out, my mother -- who's an emotionally high-strung woman -- locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of mah-jongg tiles."

-- R.B.