H eadlines
Next-Generation Players Preserve Mahjong
L OCA L
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
MAHJONG PLAYERS want
you to know that the tile game
isn’t just for bubbes.

“Over the last five years,
it’s just unbelievably grown,”
said Gail Stein, who teaches
a beginner’s mahjong class at
Old York Road Temple-Beth
Am in Abington.

Stein began teaching the
class over a decade and a half
ago, with membership hovering
at around 35 to 40 per week.

Although COVID-19 forced
in-person attendance to drop,
the Sisterhood-sponsored group
still meets weekly, maxing out
the capacity of their meeting
space. Stein said five people
have spots on the waiting list.

Although the group skews
older, and still consists mostly
of older women reaching
retirement age or becoming
empty nesters, the class has
seen a few new faces.

“We’re starting to get the
next generation,” Stein said.

The youngest player to join
the class was 13. A man in his
20s or 30s started attending the
weekly meetup as well.

“They know if they walk in
our door that they are accepted
and that we will find a place for
them to play,” Stein said.

Mahjong is a strategy game,
with Japanese, Chinese and
American variations. Players
aim to create a certain “hand”
of tiles that contain various suits.

Beyond being an enter-
taining game to play, mahjong
is mostly played for social
purposes, Stein said. It’s been
this way since she was young,
when she learned at 7 years old
how to play mahjong from her
mother. Stein played the game
with a group of 16 friends in
high school.

“It’s just fun,” she said. “It
gives me so much pleasure
to watch these girls have
something to do that’s fun
because we all work so hard in
our lives, and you don’t have
time for fun.”
Although Temple-Beth
Am Sisterhood’s mahjong
group leans toward the typical
demographic, their core interest
in playing the game for its social
benefits is what’s piqued the
interest of more young players.

Just before the COVID-19
pandemic began, Tribe 12, a
Philadelphia-based organi-
zation connecting 20- and
30-something-year-old Jews,
hosted a Mahjong 101 night
for women and non-bi-
nary Jews to learn the game.

The programming stopped
due to the pandemic. When
Tribe 12 asked members what
programs they wanted to see
in the coming year, mahjong
made several appearances on
people’s lists of requests.

“We had a few people say
that they’re really interested
in mahjong — either people
who were in the group before
wanting to start up again or
people who have never played
it, wanting to be part of a
game,” said Polly Edelstein,
Tribe 12’s program manager.

“It seems to be a very big
thing in pandemic life to have
people being nostalgic for
things, even goofy things that
they did in middle school,”
Edelstein said.

For young people with
grandmothers who grew up
playing the game, mahjong is
not only a throwback game, but
also a cultural touchstone and
connector to past generations.

“The pandemic has really
highlighted that people are
not interested as much in
the superficial anymore,”
Edelstein said.

The younger generation’s
interest in mahjong has been
present for a while now,
but it has been latent, said
Sarah Allen, co-leader of the
Philadelphia Riichi Mahjong
Club, which holds weekly
mahjong games at the Thirsty
Dice game cafe in Philadelphia.

Allen, 25, first found out
about mahjong when watching
an anime in high school. She
started playing the game online,
but she soon forgot about it
until she encountered a group
of people playing the game at
the Thirsty Dice in late 2019.

She’s been playing regularly
with the group since July.

Mahjong is one of many
tabletop games that has witnessed
a growing audience overall.

Mahjong is a tile game mostly
played for the purpose of socializing,
players agreed.

Photo by Gail Stein
“Recently there’s been this
renaissance or resurgence of
tabletop games,” Allen said.

Allen added that she’s drawn
to the physicality of the game.

Although she first picked up
mahjong online and enjoys
playing virtually, the online
game isn’t the same as playing
with a group in-person.

“There’s something more
fun about playing it in-person
— actually sitting at the table,
moving the tiles around with
your hands,” Allen said. l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0741
Antisemitism Breaks Out in South Jersey
L OCA L
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
ANTISEMITISM HAS
been breaking out too often
for comfort in recent years,
according to local and national
Jewish leaders.

And in December, antisemi-
tism struck South Jersey.

Two incidents, one at
Marlton Middle School and
another at Congregation Adath
Emanu-El in Mount Laurel,
happened in Burlington
County specifically.

On Dec. 5 at Adath Emanu-
El, a sixth-grade religious
school student walked into
the office and told synagogue
leaders about a swastika sticker
6 DECEMBER 30, 2021
on a sign in the parking lot.

“We are everywhere,” read the
text above the swastika.

Then, on Dec. 16 and 17
at Marlton Middle, two
swastikas were found in boys
bathroom stalls. Next to one
was the sentence “Hitler was
right,” according to Evesham
Township School District
Superintendent Justin Smith.

The other had a stick figure
with X’ed-out eyes beside the
word “Jew.”
Leaders at both institutions
informed local law enforce-
ment about the swastikas, and
investigations are ongoing.

Police removed the sticker at
the Reform temple and kept it
for their records, according to
Rabbi Benjamin David.

Evesham Township Police
Chief Christopher Chew told
the Courier Post that his
department is reviewing video
from Marlton Middle.

Burling ton
Count y
Prosecutor Scott Coffina called
both incidents “extremely
disturbing.” He said he thought
they could be related to a larger
rise in antisemitism in New
Jersey and the country. But he
didn’t necessarily see them as a
problem specific to the county.

Regardless of the reason,
though, the outbreaks “need
to be confronted,” Coffina said.

After both
incidents, Burlington and South Jersey
residents and leaders did just that.

See Swastika, Page 16
JEWISH EXPONENT
This swastika was found outside Congregation Adath Emanu-El in Mount
Laurel in December.
Courtesy of Rabbi Benjamin David
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
NEWSBRIEFS ISRAELBRIEFS
Third Graders Told to Reenact Holocaust Scenes
A STAFF MEMBER at a Washington, D.C., elementary school
instructed students to reenact scenes from the Holocaust on Dec.

17, JTA reported, citing The Washington Post.

When the third-graders at Watkins Elementary School asked
why the Germans killed Jews, the staffer said it was “because the
Jews ruined Christmas.”
The woman reportedly told a Jewish student to play the role of
Adolf Hitler and to pretend to commit suicide. Another was told
to pretend that he was on a train headed to a concentration camp
and then to act as if he were dying in a gas chamber.

The staff member told students not to talk about the reenact-
ment, but they told their homeroom teacher.

The staffer was placed on leave that day. School Principal
Scott Berkowitz condemned the incident in an email to
parents. He said the students met with the school’s mental
health team.

Plan Approved to Nearly
Double Petah Tikva’s Size
THE CENTRAL DISTRICT
Planning and
Building Committee approved a plan that
would add 63,500 housing units
in Petah Tikva, increasing the
population of the city northeast
of Tel Aviv from 266,000 residents
to 460,000, Globes reported.

Many of the housing units will
be in Sirkin, a new neighborhood on
the army base being vacated there,
and the Yoseftal neighborhood is
set to be demolished and rebuilt.

A new road from Sirkin exiting
toward Jerusalem will be built.

The plan will encourage
urban renewal in industrial
zones and proposes adding 3.8
million square meters of office
and commercial space, while
also improving the transporta-
tion infrastructure.

Founded in 1878, Petah
Tikva was the country’s first
Jewish agricultural village.

AIPAC Gets Into Fundraising Business
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC,
which is the country’s largest pro-Israel lobby, is getting into the
fundraising business, JTA reported.

The AIPAC name has caused confusion for years, as PAC
typically stands for political action committee.

On Dec. 16, AIPAC launched a regular political action
committee to funnel donations of up to $5,000 to designated
candidates per race, and a super PAC, which can raise unlimited
money per candidate. The regular PAC will be named AIPAC
PAC; the super PAC hasn’t been named.

“The creation of a PAC and a super PAC is an opportunity
to significantly deepen and strengthen the involvement of the
pro-Israel community in politics,” AIPAC spokesman Marshall
Wittmann said. “The PACs will work in a bipartisan way.”
Forty-seven Percent of
Arab-Israelis Speak Only
Some to No Hebrew
A 2020 survey by Israel’s Central
Bureau of Statistics revealed
that 47% of Arab-Israeli respon-
dents said they speak “medium”
to “almost zero” Hebrew, The
Jerusalem Post reported.

The 53% of Arab-Israelis who
rate their Hebrew as “good” to
“very good” compares to 91% of
Jewish Israelis.

In October, a $2.84 billion
initiative was launched to
reduce gaps in education among
Arab-Israelis, including a
program to improve Hebrew
literacy, develop more relevant
educational content, promote
after-school education and reduce
dropout rates.

The initiative also pledges $760
million to build classrooms in Arab
regions and an additional $2,211
investment per Arab student. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
Financial advice
from a
knowledgeable neighbor.

Torah Scroll Sections Reappear in Germany 83 Years
After Kristallnacht
A German Protestant minister handed over segments of a
long-lost Torah scroll to the city of Görlitz in southeast Germany,
83 years after his father, a town policeman, came to possess them,
JTA reported.

The Torah hadn’t been seen since Kristallnacht on Nov. 9 and
10, 1938.

Pastor Uwe Mader, 79, the minister who turned the fragments
over, said his father, Willi Mader, was a young police officer in
training when he was called to the synagogue.

Uwe Mader said his father never spoke about what happened
that night, so it is unclear how the four Torah fragments
ended up in his hands. Uwe Mader believes they must have
been cut out by someone who could read the Torah and
select certain passages, including the creation story and the
Ten Commandments.

The fragments changed hands several times over the years
of Nazi and later Soviet rule, eventually winding up with
Uwe Mader. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
E. Matthew Steinberg
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Israeli Landline Phone
Service Price to Drop 40%
Landline phone service in Israel
will be reduced by about 40%
in the next two years, saving
the public about $126.3 million
annually, the Communications
Ministry announced on
Dec. 22, The Jerusalem
Post reported.

Landline service prices are
expected to drop from about
$16-$19 a month to an average
of $9.50-$12.60.

The change is expected to
benefit the elderly and ultra-Or-
thodox populations the most
because they are the main
landline phone users. The price
changes are based on the advice
of Communications Ministry
officials who found that Israeli
telecom provider Bezeq makes
exceptional profits.

The price changes are
the first to landline phones
since 2003.

JEWISH EXPONENT
DECEMBER 30, 2021
7