Dreidel
four-sided spinning top and toy used on Hanukkah
A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, ( DRAY-dəl; Yiddish: דרײדל, romanized: dreydl, plural: dreydlech; Hebrew: סביבון, romanized: 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 Europe and Latin America.
Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet:
נ (nun),
ג (gimel),
ה (hei),
ש (shin).
These letters are represented in Yiddish as a mnemonic for the rules of a gambling game possibly derived from teetotum played with a dreidel: nun stands for the word נישט (nisht, "not", meaning "nothing"), gimel for גאַנץ (gantz, "entire, whole"), hei for האַלב (halb, "half"), and shin for שטעל אַרײַן (shtel arayn, "put in").
However, according to folk etymology, these four letters represent the Hebrew phrase נֵס גָּדוֹל הָיָה שָׁם (nes gadól hayáh sham, "a great miracle happened there"), referring to the miracle of the cruse of oil. For this reason, most dreidels in Israel replace the letter shin with the letter פ (pe), to represent the phrase נֵס גָּדוֹל הָיָה פֹּה (nes gadól hayáh poh, "a great miracle happened here");
As many Haredi communities insisted that shin be used in the Land of Israel (because "there" refers to the Temple in Jerusalem and not Israel entirely), five-sided dreidels were invented in 2022 to represent the Hebrew phrase נֵס גָּדוֹל הָיָה שָׁם פֹּה (nes gadól hayáh sham poh, "a great miracle happened here and there" or "a great miracle happened everywhere"). Twenty-sided dreidels are unique as they are not spinning tops but twenty-sided dice instead.
While not mandated (a mitzvah) for Hanukkah (the only traditional mitzvot are lighting candles and saying the full hallel), spinning the dreidel is a traditional game played during the holiday.
Origins
The dreidel possibly developed from an Irish or English top introduced into Germany known as a teetotum, which was popular around Christmas time and dates back to ancient Greek and Roman times.
The teetotum was inscribed with letters denoting the Latin words for "nothing", "everything", "half", and "put in".
“Dreidel” enters the record as four-sided spinning top and toy used on Hanukkah. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dreidel, four-sided and spinning can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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