Where Jewish and Chinese Cultures Merge
Nobody can pinpoint when the confluence of Chinese and Jewish cultures began. Many a Jew really does spend Christmas Day enjoying a meal at a Chinese restaurant. Each group has its own unique New Year celebration, and they are two of the oldest cultures in existence. And both have a segment of their population that loves Mah Jongg. ’Project Mah Jongg,’ at the Skirball Cultural Center through September 2, focuses on this ancient game and its relevance throughout the 20th century’especially in Jewish circles. The history of Mah Jongg in the United States goes back to the 1920s. Businessman Joseph Babcock discovered the game while working in China for the Standard Oil Company, and began importing the game to the West, beginning in San Francisco. He simplified the ancient game, and invented the spelling ‘Mah-Jongg,’ which he copyrighted and remains in use today as one of the many options (Ma Jong, Ma Cheuk and Pung Chow are three examples). A Babcock-imported set from 1923 is on view in the exhibition. When Babcock published ‘Babcock’s Rules for Mah Jongg’The Red Book of Rules’ in 1920, Woodrow Wilson was president, a loaf of bread cost 9 cents, Flappers were all the rage and Prohibition was the law of the land. The Mah Jongg craze lasted from about 1922 to 1925, reaching its peak of popularity in 1923. Curator Erin Clancey planned this show, which originated at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York in 2010, for over a year and had a lot of fun with it. The show, she says, ‘explores the connection of Mah Jongg to Jewish-American women, which is a somewhat surprising sort of cultural exchange.’ For Americans, Mah Jongg is most similar to gin rummy, though tiles, not cards, are traditionally used. ‘Crack, bam and dot are the three suits in Mah Jongg,’ Clancey says. ‘The words are a sort of shorthand for the images on the tiles: cracks are Chinese characters, bams have images of bamboo, and dots are described as circles, balls or dots.’As a player discards a tile she would call out, for example, ‘four bam’ or ‘nine crack.” The exhibit, housed in a small gallery, includes vintage objects, sounds and photography mixed in with contemporary works of art. It starts with the beginnings of the game in America, and features an old Chinese set made with bamboo and bone. Cords on the walls can be pulled, making a clacking sound similar to Mah Jongg tiles. A soundtrack of music and women talking begins to play, adding an interesting auditory experience to the exhibition. ’Americans couldn’t get enough Mah Jongg,’ Clancey says. ‘It was a game that was played mostly by members of high society because sets were expensive. It was a symbol of sophistication and worldliness.’ Colorful tiles, often with exotic Chinese imagery, were enticing to Westerners. Eventually, American toy manufactures such as Milton Bradley created sets that were made of cardboard, plastic and other less expensive materials, allowing the game to become popular with the masses. Everyday items reflected the love Americans had for the game. Included in the exhibit is a doll named the Mah Jongg Kid and an apron with a pattern of Mah Jongg tile images. Mah Jongg inspired fashion, and one photograph from 1924 shows women dressed as suits from the game. In the 1920s, Americans were enthralled with faraway locales such as China and all things Chinese’except sometimes the people, particularly immigrants. ‘There was the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in the 1880s,’ Clancey says. ‘Another immigration act passed in 1924 that severely restricted immigration, and Chinese immigrants in particular were the target of a lot of discrimination.’ When the fad fizzled out, one group of people remained enamored with the game: American-Jewish women of German descent, mostly immigrants. Though no one knows for sure, some speculate that the reason the game resonated with these women is because they connected with the plight of the Chinese immigrants: they lived near one another in Manhattan (the Lower East Side was close to Chinatown) and they were both non-Christian immigrants. Rules were not uniform, so to rectify this the National Mah Jongg League was formed by Jewish women in 1937 with the plan of unifying American Mah Jongg under one set of rules. Early rulebooks are shown in the exhibit. From the beginning, the League began selling Mah Jongg cards, and a new one is still created every year. ’The Mah Jongg cards have all the winning hands that you would need to make Mah Jongg,’ Clancey says. ‘Nowadays everyone plays with these cards. It changes every year, and that keeps the game fresh.’ Today, the League has over 300,000 members. The League also became a charitable organization through the money raised by selling the cards, which cost $7 and up today. ‘In the 1940s they held tournaments and raised money for medicine and clothing, and a mobile kitchen for bombed areas in England during World War II,’ Clancey says. The money also helped to support Jewish refugees after the war, and went to the China Relief Fund when the country was under attack by the Japanese. A photo in the exhibit features members of the National Mah Jongg League in 1943. Women dressed up to play Mah Jongg, wearing fine clothes while sitting around the table with friends. ‘I think the resurgence of Mah Jongg is partly because of the desire to return to the sort of stylishness, when people wore hats and brooches and dressed up and cared about how they presented themselves,’ Clancey says. Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi was commissioned to create something for the exhibit. He enthusiastically agreed to design four outfits because his mother ‘was a Mah Jongg demon,’ Clancey says. ‘He remembers falling asleep to the sound of clacking tiles,’ a sound that lulled many children to sleep decades ago. Though the clothes were never produced, Mizrahi’s Mah Jongg-influenced creations included an evening gown, a cocktail dress and outfits for daytime and lounging by the pool. A reproduction of his original designs hangs on one wall. In American Mah Jongg, especially in the Jewish community, winning wasn’t always the object, but becoming a part of a tight community was. Mah Jongg groups usually comprised five players, who would meet weekly. Women shared their lives with each other over the clacking of tiles, while young children might play together in a playpen. An evening of Mah Jongg might also entail Asian-inspired food and decorations along with mid-century favorites such as Jell-O and canned fruit. Traveling cases made the game easy to take on vacation, whether it was to the Catskills or Miami Beach, where Jews traditionally spent their holidays. Abbot Miller of Pentagram Design in New York designed the exhibit, and it is shown at the Skirball exactly as it was seen at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, including different tiers, and the shape of a Jewish star at the top. In other museums, where space was an issue, the full effect was not possible, such as the Oregon Jewish Museum in Portland (2011). The exhibit has also traveled to the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio, and after the Skirball will go to the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami Beach. A Mah Jongg table is set up in the middle of the exhibit, and adults are welcome to make a reservation to play. People are invited to bring their own Mah Jongg sets and sit outside, where tables and colorful chairs are set up. Children’s activities will be available on the weekends, and there are events relating to the exhibit. For more information, go to skirball.org.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.