Dreidel

Wooden dreidel

A dreidel (Yiddish: דרײדל‎ dreydl plural: dreydlekh,^[1] Hebrew: סביבון‎ sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in many European cultures.

Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (He), ש (Shin), which together form the acronym for "נס גדול היה שם" (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – "a great miracle happened there"). These letters were originally a mnemonic for the rules of a gambling game played with a dreidel: Nun stands for the Yiddish word nisht ("nothing"), He stands for halb ("half"), Gimel for gants ("all"), and Shin for shtel ayn ("put in"). In Israel, the fourth side of most dreidels is inscribed with the letter פ (Pei) instead, rendering the acronym, נס גדול היה פה, Nes Gadol Hayah Poh—"A great miracle happened here" referring to the miracle occurring in the Land of Israel. Some stores in Haredi neighborhoods sell the ש dreidels.

Origins

The dreidel developed from an Irish or English top introduced into Germany in late Roman Empire times and known as a teetotum, inscribed with letters denoting the Latin words for “nothing,” “half,” “everything” and “put in.” In German this came to be called a trendel, with German letters for the same concepts. Adapted to the Hebrew alphabet when Jews adopted the game, these letters were replaced by shin (=shtel arayn (put in); nun (= nit (not, i.e., nothing); gimel, representing gants (whole/everything); and he (=halb (half)). The letters served as a means to recalling the rules of the game.

When the game spread to Jewish communities that were unfamiliar with Yiddish, the denotations of the Hebrew letters were not understood. There arose as a result Jewish traditions to explain their assumed meaning. Some claimed the 4 letters cyphered Babylon, Persia, Greece and the Roman Empire, the four ancient empires that tried to destroy Israel; a gematriya reading yielded the number 358, identical to the value of the 4 letters used for Moshiach (Messiah). A third popular conjecture had it that the letters abbreviated the words nes gadol haya sham (a great miracle happened there), an idea that became attached to dreidels when the game entered into Hanukkah festivities. ^[2]

At this point, a tradition arose that the game was developed by cave-dwelling Jews who studied the Torah in seclusion as they hid from the Seleucids under Antiochus IV. At the first sign of Seleucids approaching, their Torah scrolls would be concealed and be replaced by dreidels.^[3][4] The variant names goyrl (destiny) and varfl (a little throw) were also current in Yiddish until the Holocaust.^[2] In the wake of Zionism, the dreidel was renamed sevivon in modern Hebrew, and the letters altered, with shin generally replaced by pe. This yields the reading nes gadol haya po (a great miracle happened here.')^[2]

Etymology

Dreidels for sale at Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem

The Yiddish word dreydl comes from the word dreyen ("to turn", compare to drehen, meaning the same in German). The Hebrew word sevivon comes from the Semitic root "SBB" ("to turn") and was invented by Itamar Ben-Avi (the son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda) when he was 5 years old. Hayyim Nahman Bialik used a different word, "kirkar" (from the root "KRKR" – "to spin"), in his poems,^[5] but it was not adopted into spoken Hebrew.

In the lexicon of Ashkenazi Jews from Udmurtia and Tatarstan the local historian A.V. Altyntsev was fixed several other appellations of a dreidel such as "volchok", "khanuke-volchok", "fargl", "varfl", "dzihe" and "zabavke". ^[6]

Symbolism

Some rabbis ascribe symbolic significance to the markings on the dreidel. One commentary, for example, connects the four letters with the four nations to which the House of Judah was historically subject—Babylonia, Persia, Seleucid Empire and Rome.^[7] While not mandated (a mitzvah) for Hanukkah (the only mandated mitzvot are lighting candles and saying the full hallel), spinning the dreidel is a traditional game played during the holiday.^[8]

Rules of the game

Each player begins with an equal number of game pieces (usually 10–15). The game pieces can be any object, such as chocolate gelt, pennies, or raisins.

• At the beginning of each round, every participant puts one game piece into the center "pot". Every player puts one in the pot after every turn.
• Each player spins the dreidel once during their turn. Depending on which player side is facing up when it stops spinning, they give or take game pieces from the pot:
  • a) If נ (nun) is facing up, the player does nothing.
  • b) If ג (gimel) is facing up, the player gets everything in the pot.
  • c) If ה (hay) is facing up, the player gets half of the pieces in the pot. (If there are an odd number of pieces in the pot, the player takes the half the pot rounded up to the nearest whole number)
  • d) If ש (shin) or פ (pei) is facing up, the player adds a game piece to the pot (often accompanied with the chant "Shin, Shin, put one in"^[9]). In some game versions a Shin results in adding three game pieces to the pot (one for each stem of the Shin).
• If the player is out of pieces, they are either "out" or may ask another player for a "loan".^[10]

These rules are comparable to the rules for a classic four-sided teetotum, where the letters A, D, N and T form a mnemonic for the rules of the game, aufer (take), depone (put), nihil (nothing), and totum (all). Similarly, the Hebrew letters on a dreidel may be taken as a mnemonic for the game rules in Yiddish. Occasionally, in the United States, the Hebrew letters on the dreidel form an English-language mnemonic about the rules: Hay, or "H" standing for "half;" Gimel, or "G" standing for "get all;" Nun or "N" standing for "nothing;" and Shin or "S" standing for "share".

Thomas Robinson and Sujith Vijay have shown that the expected number of spins in a game of dreidel is O(n²), where n is the number of game pieces each player begins with. The implied constant depends on the number of players.^[11]

Collections

Childhood enjoyment of dreidels has led to interest in collecting them in adulthood.^[12] Jewish institutions such as the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, Yeshiva University and Temple Emanu-El in New York, house dreidel collections, as do museums such as the Spinning Top and Yo-Yo Museum in Burlington, Wisconsin.^[12]

Tournaments

Dreidel is now a spoof competitive sport in North America. Major League Dreidel (MLD), founded in New York City in 2007, hosts dreidel tournaments during the holiday of Hanukkah. In MLD tournaments the player with the longest Time of Spin (TOS) is the winner. MLD is played on a Spinagogue, the official spinning stadium of Major League Dreidel. Pamskee was the 2007 MLD Champion. Virtual Dreidel was the 2008 MLD Champion.^[13] In 2009, Major League Dreidel launched a game version of the Spinagogue.^[14]

In 2009, Good Morning America published a story on Dreidel Renaissance reporting on the rising popularity of the dreidel.^[15] Dreidel games that have come out on the market since 2007 include No Limit Texas Dreidel,^[16] a cross between traditional dreidel and Texas Hold'em poker, invented by a Judaica company called ModernTribe.^[17] Other new dreidel games include Staccabees^[18] and Maccabees.^[19]

See also

• I Have a Little Dreidel (aka The Dreidel Song)
• Hanukkah music
• Hanukkah gelt
• Jewish ceremonial art

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dreidels.

• Dreidel Wizard
• The Origin of the Dreidel
• Computer program that plays the dreidel game (with full Java source code)
• Dreidel Design
• MajorLeagueDreidel.com, web page of Major League Dreidel (MLD), "Spin The Dreidel" Tournaments.
• Types of Dreidels
• A Dreidel collection (part of world's largest collection of dice)

Hanukkah Traditions Symbols Menorah (Hanukiah) Dreidel (Sevivon) Gelt Public menorah Foods Latkes (Levivot) Sufganiyah Buñuelos Music "Ma'oz Tzur (Rock of Ages)" "Dreidel Song" "Oh Chanukah" Other Chrismukkah Thanksgivukkah "The Chanukah Song" Maccabean Revolt Events Seleucid Empire Temple in Jerusalem Maccabees Hasmonean Kingdom Historical accounts 1 Maccabees 2 Maccabees Miracle of the cruse of oil People Mattathias Simeon Eleazar Jonathan Judah Antiochus IV Epiphanes List of Judean rulers Battles Wadi Haramia Beth Horon Emmaus Beth Zur Beth Zechariah Adasa Dathema Elasa