A dreidel for Chanukah

Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, is celebrated this year from December 22-30.

As we were eating at the Crown Center one evening recently, several very young children were brought into the dining room and encouraged to give each of us seniors a cookie and a dreidel.  What fun!  Those of us who had never played with these tiny wooden tops were laughing as we tried to spin the dreidels.  Some of us kept practicing until we could do it.  Our dreidels, though tiny, were not all the same.  Mine looks very similar to this illustration.

Why did they give us these toys?  Because it is customary to play with a dreidel during Hanukkah.  On each of the four sides is a Hebrew letter:  nun, gimmel, hey, and shin.  Those four letters are an acronym for "nes gadol hayah sham," which mean "a great miracle happened there."  Let me explain.

When the people of Israel were liberated from Greek dominance, they reclaimed the Temple, but could find only enough oil to light the menorah for a single day.  A miracle occurred when the tiny amount of oil kept the menorah burning for eight days.  In this picture, the middle candle is the shamash, but note that there are eight that are lit to commemorate the eight days, adding one day each evening until the candles are all lighted.

The dreidel game is usually played for a pot of pennies, nuts, chocolate gelt, or something similar, which is won or lost based on which letter of the dreidel is up when it is falls over after being spun.  Each player starts with an equal number of tokens, usually 10-15.  They spin to decide who goes first.  The highest is nun, then gimmel, hey, and shin.  (If there's a tie, those two spin again.)  Players each put one token into the pot at beginning of every round, and play moves clockwise.

Each player spins the dreidel once during their turn.  Depending on which side is facing up when the dreidel stops spinning, the player either gives or takes game pieces from the pot.

• If nun נ is facing up, the player does nothing.  The person to the left spins.
• If gimmel ג is facing up, you get to take the whole pot.  Everyone, including the spinner, puts another ante unit into the pot, and the person to the left spins.
• If hey ה is facing up, the player gets half of the pieces in the pot.  (If there are an odd number of pieces in the pot, leave the odd item there.)
• If shin ש is facing up, the spinner has to put another unit into the pot.  (Sorry!)

Any player who cannot contribute after landing on a shin or after a fellow player lands on a gimmel, is out of the game.  The game ends when there is one player left.  I thought it was kind of cute that one set of rules I found says that the game ends as soon as one of the following occurs:  the sun comes up, all the latkes (potato pancakes) are gone, or the players decide they have had enough.