What is a Dreidel?

My kids accumulate dreidels the way other kids accumulate Legos. By the end of Chanukah, there are dreidels in every drawer, under every couch cushion, and rolling around the bottom of every school bag. Wooden ones, plastic ones, metallic ones, tiny ones from party favors. It is a dreidel invasion, and I have accepted my fate.

A dreidel (Yiddish: דרײדל, Hebrew: sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top that is the iconic toy of Chanukah. Each side is stamped with a Hebrew letter: Nun (נ), Gimmel (ג), Hey (ה), and Shin (ש). Together, they form the acronym for "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham" — "A Great Miracle Happened There," referring to the miracle of the oil in the Beis HaMikdash. In Israel, the Shin is replaced with a Pey (פ), changing "Sham" (there) to "Po" (here), since in Israel, the miracle happened right here.

How to Play Dreidel

The dreidel game is simple enough for small children and entertaining enough for adults (especially when chocolate is involved):

1. Each player starts with an equal number of game pieces — traditionally Chanukah gelt (chocolate coins), nuts, raisins, or pennies
2. Everyone puts one piece into the center pot
3. Players take turns spinning the dreidel
4. The letter it lands on determines what happens:
   • Nun — Nothing. You do not take or give.
   • Gimmel — Great! You take the entire pot.
   • Hey — Half. You take half the pot.
   • Shin — Sorry. You put one piece in.
5. Whenever the pot is empty, everyone puts one in again
6. The game ends when one player has everything or when everyone gets tired (usually the second one)

In my house, the rules get modified every year based on the ages and negotiation skills of my children. There was a memorable Chanukah when my oldest insisted that Gimmel meant you take the whole pot AND get to spin again. She had a future in contract law.

The History

The traditional story goes that during the Greek occupation of Israel, when Torah study was outlawed, Jewish children would gather to learn Torah secretly. If Greek soldiers approached, they would pull out spinning tops and pretend they had been playing games all along. The dreidel was their cover story.

Whether this specific origin story is historically precise or more of a folk tradition is debated. What is certain is that spinning top games have been part of Jewish Chanukah celebrations for centuries, and the connection to the Chanukah miracle is deeply embedded in the tradition.

The word "dreidel" comes from the Yiddish "dreyen," meaning "to turn." The Hebrew word "sevivon" was coined by the early Zionist thinker Itamar Ben-Avi from the root "savav," also meaning "to turn."

More Than a Game

There is actually a deeper layer to the dreidel, as there tends to be with most things in Judaism. Some commentators note that the four letters correspond to the four kingdoms that tried to destroy the Jewish people: Nun for Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonia), Hey for Haman (Persia), Gimmel for Gog (Greece), and Shin for Se'ir (Rome). Each one rose and fell, but the Jewish people remained.

Others point out that the dreidel spins from above — you flick the top and it moves. This is in contrast to a secular spinning top (like a Hanukkah-era Greek top) which is spun from below. The idea is that during Chanukah, the miracles came from Above — from Hashem — spinning events in ways that defied natural expectation.

Is my seven-year-old thinking about any of this while she spins her plastic dreidel and hoards chocolate coins? No. She is thinking about chocolate. But one day, when she is older, she might learn these layers and realize that even the simplest game her family played during Chanukah was carrying thousands of years of meaning in four little letters on a spinning piece of wood.

A Chanukah Staple

The dreidel is inseparable from Chanukah, right alongside the menorah, latkes, and sufganiyot. It is the sound of Chanukah — that wobbly clatter of a top spinning on the table, the shouts of "Gimmel! Gimmel!", the crinkle of chocolate coin wrappers. It is simple, it is ancient, and it works. Eight nights of family gathered around a table, spinning and laughing. Not everything needs to be complicated to be meaningful.