From the 1920s until today, mahjong has captured the imagination of American Jewish players like few other games. Annelise Heinz, who teaches at the University of Oregon, is the author of “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.” Recently, I spoke with Heinz about what mahjong has meant to Jewish communities.
Even though it was really invented in Shanghai in the 19th century, was the purported antiquity of mahjong one reason why Jewish players appreciated it? The National Mah Jongg League founded in 1937 by Jewish women, you write, “never emphasized its strongly Jewish leadership” and most of its charity projects were “intentionally non-sectarian.”
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