Recalling the Craze for a Game of Chance
- Details
- Created on Friday, 19 March 2010 11:31
- Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 18:00
- Written by Martin Rep
NEW YORK - How come an all-Asian game like mahjong has become so popular amongst Jewish people in the United States ever since its introduction in the nineteen-twenties? According to Melissa Martens, quoted in yesterday’s New York Times, the craze was a novel form of entertainment for a new leisure class and paralleled a middle-class taste for Asian-style interior decoration as well as a “Jewish interest in Chinese food”. Melissa Martens is the curator of “Project Mah Jongg,” an extensive exhibit opening at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on May 4 and continuing through December.
The event has drawn the attention of the New York Times; an extensive article about it was published yesterday, and made available on its website.
Aprons
The “Project Mah Jongg” exhibition will be in the 1,000-square-foot hexagonal gallery of the pyramidlike Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park, and will include dozens of artifacts — scorecards, aprons, packages, tiles — chronicling both the commercial legacy and social history of the game.
The exhibits include the games and printed material, photographs of people (mostly women) playing and an audio component (echoing the clatter of plastic tiles and random chatting).
Read the complete article in the New York Times Website of the Jewish Heritage Museum
The chances of that happening are slim to none. At least slimmer than say, forcing non-alcoholic venues...
When DMJL was approached by Spielbank Hannover in 2011 about providing know-how and material for a Mah-Jongg tournament with money prizes the board discussed, if a cooperation seemed possible and worthwhile - the publicly available board minutes from March 2011 reflected on this (originally in German - inofficially translated [and commented] here): Apart from earnings for the association a cooperation promises a possible contact to the responsible regulatory authority [to gain higher legal certainty about DMJL's self-organised non-gambling tournaments] and obviously the development of contact to a potential sponsor, namely the Spielbank herself. The board decided unanimously that a cooperation was desirable.
To draw a line between the paid-for support of legal gambling and DMJL's very own activities, the board also decided (also unanimously), that DMJL would only act as a service provider for the said tournament, but would not want to benefit from publicity in the course of gambling activities, so that it would not be (even mistakenly) seen as an organiser of such. More over the board stressed the importance of an adequate distinction (in rules, exposition of differing procedures etc.) between events of gambling and mind sport.
There was not a minute of discussion within the board, before Uwe Pelzer terminated the cooperation with the Spielbank/RP5 - no information about his findings, no questions, no suggestions, he just acted on his own. So, Frauke, the board was neither unable nor unwilling to find an answer to the question, if this said (and before unanimously supported) cooperation should've been terminated - it was simply not asked.