Jewish Toy (Dreidel)
The dreidel is a spin top that is normally made of wood, and has 4 sides with the Hebrew alphabets: nun, gimmel, hey and shim written on their respective sides. These 4 letters are what connects the dreidel to the Hanukkah tradition as it stands for “nes gadol haya sham” – which means “a great miracle happened here”.
We are not certain why the game gained the prominence that it does, but there are a few proposals: tradition has it that the Jews played with the dreidel in order to fool the Greeks if they were ever caught studying the Torah (a practice that was outlawed at the time); others think that the letters make up an elaborate gematriot, whereby each letter equals a number, and the 4 letters equal 358, which is the numerical equivalent of masciach or Messiah; yet another guess is that the letters represent the 4 kingdoms that tried to destroy the Jews in ancient times. Namely: N = Nebuchadnetzar = Babylon; H = Haman = Persia = Madai; G = Gog = Greece; and S = Seir = Rome.
But, what we do know that the game of driedel in itself existed before the different explanations. It has been played by various people for many years; but dreidel adopts the German equivalent, where Nun = Zero, Gimel = All, Hey = half, and Shin = give. A currency is used to calculate points and everyone takes turns spinning the dreidel until the game ends with only one player left.
We are not certain why the game gained the prominence that it does, but there are a few proposals: tradition has it that the Jews played with the dreidel in order to fool the Greeks if they were ever caught studying the Torah (a practice that was outlawed at the time); others think that the letters make up an elaborate gematriot, whereby each letter equals a number, and the 4 letters equal 358, which is the numerical equivalent of masciach or Messiah; yet another guess is that the letters represent the 4 kingdoms that tried to destroy the Jews in ancient times. Namely: N = Nebuchadnetzar = Babylon; H = Haman = Persia = Madai; G = Gog = Greece; and S = Seir = Rome.
But, what we do know that the game of driedel in itself existed before the different explanations. It has been played by various people for many years; but dreidel adopts the German equivalent, where Nun = Zero, Gimel = All, Hey = half, and Shin = give. A currency is used to calculate points and everyone takes turns spinning the dreidel until the game ends with only one player left.