Any day now, Shirley Hanick will be receiving a highly anticipated shipment of new mahjong cards at her home in Toronto. The cards come from the National Mah Jongg League in New York.
And, as the officially accepted version of this year’s possible winning hands, the delivery represents some serious fun for this teacher of the game.
Hanick will then mail the cards to fill advance orders from her 1,300 clients, who are accustomed to waiting a bit longer than the traditional March 31 release date south of the border. Some of her proceeds are donated to the Baycrest hospital.
But countless mahjong enthusiasts across Canada are uncertain if they will be playing in-person this spring. The cards are arriving just as a new highly contagious COVID-19 variant has once again started to fill up hospital wards.
“We were going to be getting together again, but I’m not sure, depending on what rolls out in the next 10 days or two weeks,” said Carol Seidman, a Toronto player who spends the winter in the same Wynmoor resort community as Hanick, in Coconut Creek, Florida. “I think we’ll have a very good idea after Passover as to whether or not we’re going to be playing face-to-face—which I hope we will be—or back online.”
Playing online ‘mahj’ during the pandemic
These two are not alone in having pivoted to playing online versions of mahjong these last two years. But recreating the accompanying conversation—and the gossip—took some creative use of technology.
A website called myjongg.net offers eight free games a day. But the full experience required them to concurrently access FaceTime or WhatsApp.
“We each had two devices beside us,” Hanick explained.
Montreal teacher and player Aviva Reinitz also played online games, although she used a now-defunct app called Houseparty, and accessed realmahjongg.com. On rare occasions, when they were able to play indoors, her students and friends took extreme precautions—leaving the front and back doors open for ventilation.
“You needed a winter coat on because it was so cold in their houses, because they were so nervous of the variants that were going on,” Reinitz said.
The pandemic also halted her opportunities to fundraise for local charities. She donates tuition to a Montreal children’s hospital. But charity events at synagogues and golf clubs were largely suspended.
Vintage mahjong sets evoke memories
But as snowbirds in Florida, enjoying warmer weather and more relaxed public health measures, all three Canadian women had the opportunity to find regular and also random people to play with. Carol Seidman particularly enjoyed the weekend games without money, which she dubbed “Shabbes Mahj.”
Shirley Hanick keeps about 40 vintage mahjong sets in her Florida condo. She started to bring a different piece from her collection to the pool for those Saturday afternoon games.
Her favourite has dark, butterscotch-coloured tiles. But the group preferred to play on a set that was more suitable for seniors like them.
“What has become everybody’s favourite is something from the ’70s, which is pink, lucite and white,” she explained. “And it’s much easier to see.”
Carol Seidman maintains her own interest in collecting mahjong sets. It’s a passion she discovered once she started playing the game 18 years ago.
While she loves to explore the history and meaning behind the different designs of the tiles, she is also grateful for having had a regularly scheduled time away from her busy life and family responsibilities.
“So many of us know really well how to be responsible and how to work—but not a whole lot of us really know how to play,” Seidman said. “And that was my first introduction to organized play, and it’s something that really helped in the group: whatever was on our shoulders vanished.”
‘One Bam. One Bird.’
Aviva Reinitz also uses different mahjong sets, depending on whether she is at home in Canada or wintering in Florida. While she is fine using a modern plastic set she bought on Amazon for routine games, she also appreciates playing with a family heirloom set once in a while. It helps connect her to a tradition that dates back to previous generations of Jewish women in her extended family.
“My sister has a mahjong game from her mother-in-law. On the tiles, you could see that it’s all washed out and everything, and it has nail polish on the Joker, or the flowers have nail polish, and when you open the box… it smells like mothballs,” Reinitz said, adding that she remembers her own mother playing with her mother’s deck. “It brings so much comfort to everyone.”
She hopes her own daughters will take up the game she loves, one day, given how accustomed they are to the terms.
“You hear them, they say ‘One Bam’, ‘One bird’,” she said. “They’ve heard it as we’ve been playing.”
Reinitz also sells mahjong cards, and she’s also anticipating the arrival of the latest ones.
But she’s not as confident they signal a return to routines north of the border, no matter how comfortable things felt in Florida.
“I don’t feel there’s an issue. But if everyone else around me wants to play with the mask, then I guess that’s the way we’re going to go. We need to get used to this because it’s a virus and it’s not going away.
“So, we just have to take a deep breath and continue to play—if we feel comfortable.”
