How to Play Mah Jong

Be Chinese. Or Jewish. Choose one or both, but not neither. Get together with a good group of women. Leave the kid with your husband. Freedom!

Put off playing for as long as you can. Eat jellybeans and peanuts and drink wine. Gab, kvetch and kvell over your families. When did you get a family, anyway? When did you stop being a girl and become a woman with a kid, house, husband and dog?

Have no idea what you're doing when you sit down at the board. What are you? 68 and from Long Island? But enjoy the kitsch! It's nice to play a hard game. Better than Bunko, anyway, and you're not playing for money.

Mah Jong makes you feel Jewish in a way going to temple never did. It feels good to be among other Jewish women. There's a bond there with the other MOTs. Is it in the straightened hair? The semitic noses? Or just the sense of humor--the practicality that Jewish women seem to have about life, love and loss?

Definitely play Mah Jong often. It's good for the neshamah.

Try this at home:
What makes you feel like part of your culture?