CHANUKAH -- part 4

8 Chanukah Mysteries Revealed (continued)
by David Holzel

4. Speaking of spin, what’s the deal with that top?

That’s the dreidel in Yiddish; sevivon in Hebrew. It has four sides, marked with the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hey and shin. (They make the sounds “n,” “g,” “h,” and “sh.”)The dreidel found itself connected to Chanukah because the four letters form the abbreviation of the phrase “Nes gadol hayah sham” – “A great miracle happened there” – “there” being long-ago Judea, and the miracle being that high-mileage oil.(In Israel, the sevivon is marked nun, gimel, hey, pey, for “Nes gadol hayah po” – “A great miracle happened here.”)

But the Israeli version is a relatively recent adaptation. It seems the dreidel is based on a German top. The four letters also stand for four words in Yiddish, a European Jewish language based on German. Nun stands for nitz (nothing), gimel for ganz (everything), hey for halb (half) and shin for shtell-arein (put in). And these are the keys to playing the dreidel game.

Traditionally dreidel is played with nuts, rather than coins or chips, which are divided between the players and a pot in the middle. Each player takes a turn spinning. The letter facing up when the dreidel stops determines whether the player can take the whole pot, half the pot, nothing, or must add nuts to the pot.