Mothers build community through Mahjong
WESTON — A not-sonew game has taken on a new craze in the area — mahjong.
The tile based, fourperson game has caught the attention of over 150 people in the Weston-Westport region. Started by admin Stephanie Feingold in February, the Weston & Westport Mahjong Moms Facebook group has grown tremendously in recent months.
“I like the opportunity to sit there and play a game and think a little bit and feel like it’s more than just what groceries do I need and how am I going to strategize the carpool schedule for the afternoon,” said Feingold, a lawyer who is currently a full-time mom.
Feingold’s history with the game started as a child; her mom and grandmother used to play. She did not learn herself until years later while living in Manhattan. She learned from a mom in the city and then hired a mahjong teacher for a couple of private lessons. Once she learned the fundamentals, she began playing in games all over the city. Once she moved to Weston, she took the game with her.
“I thought it would be a really great way to try to meet people and try to start the craze here,” she said. “And get people involved really as a way to make some new friends, understand more about the town and get new doctor recommendations and things like that.”
The community around
it blossomed from there.
She started a small game with a mutual friend that lived in town, Sabrina BenCanaan, and a couple of other friends.
“We just got to know each other and it was fun,” Ben-Canaan said. “We would bring some snacks, talk about our children and life and everything going on. She taught us how to play and we would just have a great time.”
Then once scheduling become an issue for some, they broadened it out to Weston. They posted in a group and asked if anyone was interested in learning to play. The response they got was overwhelming, Ben-Canaan said.
Feingold said her first session teaching new players drew about 20 people.Since, she has run a daytime game and frequented some of the night games that have popped up.
In May, another of Feingold’s New York mahjong
friends posted to a larger Westport group saying they were going to move to Westport, so the group expanded itself to Westport too.
“I love the fact that we’re not isolating the towns from each other and it just makes it an even larger community of people to play,” Feingold said.
This expansion is commonplace when it comes to mahjong, according to historian Annelise Heinz from the University of Oregon. Heinz, whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality, wrote a book on the history of the game titled “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of a Modern American Culture .”
“One of the interesting things about mahjong is that in lots of different historical contexts, it has consistently been used to build community,” Heinz said.
She said it’s been an important part of Chinese, Chinese-American and Jewish-American communities, among others. It is a game frequently played within Air Force circles too.
Feingold said a number of the players in their group had memories of their parents and grandparents playing mahjong while they were growing up, or had inherited old sets from their family.
Lauren Ehrlich, who runs a nighttime mahjong game every two or three weeks for some of the more experienced players, said she grew up with her mom and grandma playing.
“I always laughed about it like I was sort of banished to my bedroom, I had to creep around the house so that we didn’t disturb the game when it was her turn to host, but it’s like a nostalgia thing for me,” said Ehrlich, a physician at Yale Children’s Hospital.
The game has helped Ehrlich meet some likeminded people who are into strategy and numbers games. She had previously tried some book clubs and groups of the sort with little success, she said. The social aspect mixed with the intellectual component struck the right chord for her.
“I think the bigger focus is just getting together with other moms doing something mentally stimulating and fun and challenging and just getting some alone time away from husbands, away from kids that’s not stressful,” said Robyn Matloff, a mahjong player from Weston.