Some of my favorite childhood memories are of sitting on the floor surrounded by white rectangular tiles adorned by colorful numbers and creepy smiling jokers. My father was often away for work, and between my two younger siblings and me, my mom wasn’t often available for quality one-on-one time, but games of Rummikub were the rare exception.
I loved the clacking of the tiles, trying to put the numbers in sequences on my unstable black rack held up by two plastic legs that were tricky to attach. I loved the triumphant joy of laying down a particularly good series of numbers. And I also loved knowing that this game was invented by an Israeli person, just like me.
Ephraim Hertzano wasn’t yet an Israeli citizen when he began developing the game of Rummikub in the country of his birth, Romania. His invention was a brilliant response to the communist regime forbidding card games. Inspired by the rules of Gin Rummy, it reinvented and simplified them with plastic tiles. Instead of aces, Jacks, Queens and Kings, you have tiles with the numbers one, 11, 12 and 13, and instead of spades, diamonds, hearts and clubs, there’s red, orange, black and blue tiles. The joker became an unhinged little smiley face that, in my opinion, is the stuff of nightmares. Hertzano, a cosmetics and toothbrush salesman, made his first sets from recycled airplane canopies.
“Mr. Hertzano envisioned playing a game that would use small tiles instead of cards to play,” the official Rummikub website reads, “a game that could be played by young and old alike, and that had no ties to any language or religion. He wanted to create a game that would bring people together and one day change the world’s leisure time.”
It was in Israel, however, in his new family home in Bat Yam, where he fashioned wooden Rummikub sets, hand-carved by him and painted by his sister. It was also in Israel where he started selling the game. He first won over a local store owner by inviting him over for coffee and to play some Rummikub; the experience delighted him so much that he decided to carry the game in his shop, selling homemade sets made by the Hertzano family.
Rummikub eventually became a commercial success in Israel, and the Hertzanos eventually started producing the game in a small factory in Tel Aviv.
Then, in 1977, the game took off in America. The reason? Comedian Don Rickles talked about how his wife brought a funny game called Rummikub back in Israel on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Famous fans soon included Liz Taylor and Telly Savalas. The game was advertised as “made in Israel,” and Ephraim’s son Micha, who took over the family’s game enterprise, opened a larger factory in the city of Arad.
While Ephraim had three different ways to play the game, detailed in the 1978 “The Official Rummikub Book,” called American, International and Sabra, it’s the Sabra version, traditionally played in Israel before the game’s international success, that eventually won out, and remains how the game is played today.
“Remember, this game began in Israel,” Hertzano wrote in the Rummikub book, “and Hebrew reads ‘backwards’ — from right to left — so Rummikub always goes counter-clockwise.”
In the ’80s and ’90s, Rummikub became an international sensation and was translated into over 20 languages. In 1991, a World Rummikub Championship was established. Micha Hertzano still runs Lemada Light Industries, the company and factory in Arad that makes Rummikub games and Hasbro games for the Israeli company Kodkod. And the game continues to have famous fans, like Chrissy Teigen and Gal Gadot.
As for me? I’ve passed my Rummikub obsession onto the next generation. My son loves playing the tile game with me, and with his grandmother when she’s visiting from Israel, organizing the plastic tiles into neat piles of seven on the floor for us to draw from.
And when we head to Israel on long flights to visit his grandparents, we love to pass the time by playing Rummikub on our screen — El Al being the first airline to offer the game as part of their in-flight entertainment, naturally.
Can we ask? Keep Jewish joy accessible to all. Reader donations help us do just that. Can you help us meet our year-end goals? (We'll love you forever.)
