October 19, 2001

Mah-Jongg Madness: The Other Crack Addiction

In the documentary "Mah-Jongg: The Tiles That Bind," now available on video, rhinestone- and jumpsuit-clad elderly Jewish women and their children reflect on the game that once stood at the center of American Jewish female culture. Mah-jongg, which originated in Confucian China more than 2,000 years ago, found its way into the Jewish tenements of the 1920s, eventually becoming a symbol of Jewish suburban life. Through interviews with Jewish and Asian women of the World War II generation and their adult children — for whom the click of plastic tiles was the beat of childhood itself — the documentary shows how mah-jongg is not so much a game as an exercise of the heart. In the game, players try to amass tiles of the same suit; the suits are called crack, bam, dots, winds, flowers and dragons. The game provided a nurturing all-girls' club in which women could share their stories, sorrows, dreams and hopes. As one avid player says, "It's better than therapy." The 32-minute film casts a nostalgic glow on the game's glory days of the 1940s and 1950s, when women gathered at all-night parties in Brooklyn apartments to trade tiles and eat pineapple slices, chips and M&Ms. As one woman in the film says, "Mah-jongg was more than a game. It was a way of life." The documentary, by Bari Pearlman and Phyllis Heller, costs $25 and can be ordered from BTG Productions (P.O. Box 133, New York, N.Y. 10014 or info@btgproductions.com).

— SHIRA KLAPPER