I’ve written quite a bit about Hanukkah in previous posts, specifically about the significance of latkes as traditional food during this holiday and about the meaning of the menorah as it relates to the eight days of miraculous oil, but I haven’t written anything about dreidels, so here goes:

As with anything to do with folk traditions, the origins of this item and the game you play with it are very murky, with several strands of meaning attached to them, and with some later interpretations being projected back onto the past. It is clear that games of chance such as this one, in which you win or lose depending on how an object lands after you spin it or throw it, are very ancient. Spinning tops specifically date all the way back to the ancient Babylonians, who played with clay versions as early as 3500 BC. And—get this—there was a wooden spinning top in King Tut’s tomb! Very, very cool.

So how did a spinning top and game become part of Hanukkah celebrations? Well, that’s a long and winding tale, so stick with me:

By the time of the Roman Empire, a top with four flat sides used in gambling called a “teetotum” had come into use, each side having a different Latin letter that would determine the outcome of the spin. “A” stood for “aufer,” meaning “take,” “D” stood for “depone,” meaning “put down,” “N” stood for “nihil,” meaning “nothing,” and “T” stood for “totum,” meaning “all.” So, depending on how the top fell, you’d either take half the tokens or coins from the pot, put a token into the pot, do nothing, or take the whole pot. You can understand why the flat sides would have been developed as the spinning top became part of this gambling game, since that structure would make it much easier to see precisely how the top fell at the end of its spin.

The use of this type of top spread throughout Europe during the Renaissance. (I guess this happened as part of the revival in the study of ancient Greece and Rome? Not sure.) When the game arrived in Germany it was called “trendel,” meaning “circle,” with the top itself called a “drehen,” meaning “spin.” (That’s my understanding of the two words, anyway—every source has a slightly different explanation, but this is the one that makes the most sense to me, and hey! I’m the one wading through all of this semantic stuff.) The German Jews adopted the game and adapted the name to “dreidel,” which is Yiddish for “spin.” (Although, just in case you’re interested, the authentic Yiddish spelling is “dreydl.”) As you probably already know, Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and (mainly) German, used throughout Europe by Jews up until fairly modern times and now mainly spoken in the US, Israel and Russia. It’s a whole fascinating topic in itself, but alas! As I’m always saying in these posts, I must hasten on.

The German drehen became associated especially with Christmas celebrations, although, once again, I’m not sure why this happened except that children have always been especially fascinated with spinning tops, and Christmas was especially associated with children because of the Christ Child. (That’s pure speculation on my part.) Anyway, Jewish children joined in the fun, but their tops had Hebrew instead of Latin letters on them standing for Yiddish words with the same basic meanings: ש‬ (shin)–”put in”; נ‬ (nun)–”nothing”; ג‬(gimel)–”everything”; and ה‬ (he)–”half.”

As time went on, more and more symbolism came to be associated with those four letters. Let me just quote here from that source of all wisdom and knowledge, Wikipedia:

When the game spread to Jewish communities unfamiliar with Yiddish, the denotations of the Hebrew letters were not understood. As a result, there arose Jewish traditions to explain their assumed meaning. However, in Judaism there are often multiple explanations developed for words. Some claimed the 4 letters cyphered Babylon, Persia, Greece and the Roman Empire, the four ancient empires that tried to destroy Israel. . . . [Another] 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. (The “miracle,” of course, is that of the holy oil that burned for eight days in the Temple when it should have lasted for only one.)

So here’s an example of the type of thing I mentioned in my intro: a meaning in the present gets projected onto the past. From what we can tell in the historical record, when dreidels were first introduced into the German Jewish community they were simply a toy/game that children liked. Germans associated them with Christmas; eventually Jews associated them with Hanukkah, since that holiday occurs at roughly the same time as Christmas. (It follows the Jewish calendar, not the secular one, so its dates shift each year just as other Jewish holidays do, but it always falls somewhere around late November to late December.) Then symbolism was attached to a tradition that already existed.

And don’t even get me started on those gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins, the Hanukkah gelt. Giving coins out as gifts was a Hanukkah tradition for many years, and then the old American spirit of commercialism kicked in, and in the 1920’s the candy company Loft’s produced the first chocolate version of the coins, selling them in mesh bags. Sometimes these chocolate coins are used as the gambling tokens for playing the dreidel game. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual meaning of the holiday, but oh well. I guess I shouldn’t be too Grinchy about them.

It’s also fair to point out that while the non-Jewish world thinks of Hanukkah as a prominent holiday, it’s not really that big of a deal to the observant Jewish community. It’s a family celebration, not something that has services at the synagogue or anything like that. In fact, the Hanukkah menorah isn’t even the same as the one that was in the Temple. That one had seven branches; the Hanukkah one has nine, one for each of the eight days of the holiday and the middle one for lighting all the rest.

Here’s a very fun version of the dreidel song, complete with the Hanukkah chocolate gelt coins:

What a lovely time of games, gifts, eating, and remembrance Hanukkah is! I hope you’ll take the time to watch the music videos below from the peerless a cappella singing group The Maccabeats as they sing about latkes and Hanukkah candles:

© Debi Simons

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