Around 500 people gathered at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan on Sunday for the New York Jewish Mah Jongg Festival, a two-day event of lessons, lectures, social play, and vendors, according to reporting by Rebecca Szlechter for JNS, published in The Jewish Star.
Gregg Swain, a mahjong historian, spoke at the festival. “I think people really just want to connect,” Swain told JNS. “Nowadays, it’s just so easy to spend time doing something mindless on the computer. Mahjong really allows people to connect in different ways.”
In the game, players start with 13 tiles on their racks and take turns drawing and discarding to build a winning combination, known as a “hand,” drawn from the annual National Mah Jongg League guide. The first player to complete a valid hand and declare “mahjong” wins the round.
Swain, who is in her 70s, told JNS that the table regularly crosses generation gaps. “The other day, I was playing a game, and I’m in my 70s,” she said. “There was somebody else in their 50s, and two people were in their 20s. Only around the mahjong table would you find something like that.”
Donna Kassman and Dara Collins, the founders of Modern Mahjong, led instructional sessions at the festival. They taught newcomers the basics and strategies and explained the 2026 National Mah Jongg League guide. Kassman told first-timers not to be put off by more experienced players. “Don’t be intimidated by people who play,” she said.
Daniela Taitel, who runs a company that organizes mahjong events and fundraisers and attended the festival from Rye, NY, said the game has built a substantial community in Westchester County. “Every Wednesday, we host mahjong events,” she told JNS. “We’re about 200 women strong, and half of them are here today.” She said the player base has shifted. “Mahjong’s demographic has widened, so it’s not just your grandmother’s game anymore,” Taitel said. “It’s open to everybody.”
Swain’s presentation traced the game’s path from China into American Jewish life. Mahjong took root in Jewish communities during the 1920s and 1930s as Jewish women organized social gatherings and charitable fundraisers, she told attendees. It was played in wealthy Manhattan homes and crowded Lower East Side tenements. It provided community through difficult periods including the Great Depression. The National Mah Jongg League was created in 1937. It standardized American rules and established the game as a distinctly American Jewish tradition. It sold annual membership cards to support charitable causes, Swain said.
“Many people like to think that it really is thousands of years old,” Swain told the crowd. Earlier Chinese card games do date back centuries, but the version recognizable today emerged only in the mid-19th century, with later marketing campaigns emphasizing ancient origins to make it seem more exotic, she said.
Hasia Diner, professor emerita of history at New York University, told JNS that the game’s postwar popularity among Jewish women grew as household technology freed up leisure time. The game gave women “a way to do something pleasurable, just for themselves,” said Diner, who was not involved in the festival. Mahjong first spread through informal family and friendship networks before Jewish Community Centers began hosting organized games, she said. The game gave women “an avenue to a bigger, more fun world” and preserved community bonds, Diner said. “Playing mahjong did not threaten Jewish solidarity and bonds,” she said.
“It’s a wonderful escape and vacation from the trials of everyday life,” Swain told JNS. “When you’re sitting down at the mahjong table, all you’re really worried about is those little tiles in front of you and what you’re going to do to win.”
Featured image: Via Wikimedia Commons
