Judy Umansky, a longtime Roslyn resident, has been a games guru for thousands of Long Islanders whose lives she’s helped navigate through the changing waters of time.
She’s the doyenne of Mah Jongg and the countess of Canasta who’s been teaching these popular games for the past 21 years to all levels of players at numerous adult learning, community centers, synagogues, libraries as well as privately across Nassau and Suffolk counties. She’s been teaching at the Sid Jacobson JCC in Greenvale since 2007.
Some Long Islanders may remember their moms playing Mah Jongg or Canasta in the 1950s and 1960s. Its popularity fizzled in the 1970s as the women’s movement hit its stride and women joined the workforce.
Umansky, however, has been playing the games for 58 years and teaching them for 21 years. In recent years, they’ve made a resurgence and with younger players joining in the fun.
Umansky recalled that during the economic downturn in 2007, many younger women who’d lost their jobs filled their unexpected free time and joined her classes.
Throughout the year, her Canasta clinics for players who learn to strategize are, on some days, filled with 50 women and a smattering of men.
Umansky, said “women don’t like to sit around. They like to be busy” and take classes to keep their minds sharp.
She started teaching in 2004 when she approached the coordinator of an adult education center and asked if they had a Mah Jongg teacher.
The coordinator said they’d had one who “didn’t work out.” Umansky responded, “That’s because you had the wrong teacher.”
And so, a Mah Jongg maven was born with Canasta connoisseur added to her teaching repertoire three years later.
“At one point,” she recalled, “I was teaching 13 classes a week.”
Umansky manages to teach almost every day and some evenings but attends theatre productions, lectures and enjoys spending time with family and husband, Paul, who helps her teach the Canasta classes.
What she finds most rewarding about teaching is “when students who think they’re learning a foreign language look confused and suddenly,” she said, adding “you see the lightbulb come on and they go from bewildered to bedazzled.”
She recounted how an affectionate moniker, “Queen,” was bestowed. “When I started teaching, I’d meet someone I knew from my classes in a department store, a museum,” and, she recalled, “even on a cruise ship.”
Her grandchildren, fascinated, thought their grandmother was “the most popular woman on Long Island,” she said. Her adult granddaughter calls her “Queen.”
Many of Umansky’s students would agree.
Impeccably dressed and coifed, the Queen of Long Island is part teacher, part mother figure and storyteller. Her contacts list stretches along the entire east coast encompassing thousands of students from Great Neck to Greenport, Syosset to Southampton, and Bayside to Boca.
Her philosophy is simple and direct, much like Umansky herself. “It’s not whether you win or lose in Mah Jongg or Canasta. It’s the people you meet and the friends you make along the way” that enhance one’s life, she explained.
Through her courses, many students have reunited with friends they grew up with but haven’t connected with in 40 years.
Long Islanders who’ve relocated to Florida will inevitably meet others there who took Umansky’s Mah Jongg and Canasta classes, up north.
Umansky said she has also seen friendships grow outside of class as some students not only form their own weekly games group but develop a close-knit bond with new friends they’ve made during this transitional phase of life.
“It makes me incredibly happy when I see strangers who don’t know anyone in the room make new, lasting friendships at this stage of their lives,” she said.
Audrey Kurland, associate executive director of adult programming at the Sid Jacobson JCC and Umansky’s supervisor, lauds her work as a teacher and praises “her ability to pull people together of all ages and demographics.”
She marvels that with all the people Umansky meets. “She’ll remember your name and if you don’t show up for class for a couple of weeks will call to see if you’re OK.”
Kurland said Umansky shows humanity and compassion to all those around her.
“She takes care of everyone in her world like they’re a part of her immediate family,” she said.
