It is a common sight on Hanukkah, a scene replayed in Jewish homes throughout the world.
Huddled together on the floor after having had their fill of latkes and jelly doughnuts, youngsters grab the dreidel, the four-sided top bearing a letter on each side, spinning it repeatedly to win chocolate coins (or sometimes even a few real ones).
For many of us, it has probably been a while since we picked up a dreidel and gave it a whirl, let alone a great deal of thought.
And that’s unfortunate because while we tend to associate it with kids, the truth is that the dreidel is far more than just child’s play and contains within it some deep and meaningful symbolism.
Tradition links the dreidel back to the time of the persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid Greeks, the villains of the Hanukkah story.
According to the 19th-century work Otzar Kol Minhagei Yeshurun, by Rabbi Avraham Eliezer Hirshovitz, the Syrian-Greek occupiers sought to ban the study of Torah and prohibited Jews from gathering to do so. To circumvent the decree, the sages would deploy the dreidel to fool the Greeks into thinking that they were merely playing rather than studying.
“Hence,” wrote Rabbi Hirshovitz, “the game has remained with us to recall the miracle, due to which they did not forget the Torah of God which has stood with our ancestors and with us.”
It is interesting to note that he implies that it was not merely children who used the dreidel but anyone who was studying Torah at the time, including perhaps the sages themselves.
Others offer a different theory behind the origin of the dreidel, suggesting that it was based on a 16th-century game called teetotum, popular among non-Jews in England, Germany, and elsewhere, which utilized a four-sided top with lettering.
Either way, many great rabbinical figures of the past two centuries are known to have used a dreidel on Hanukkah. These included Rabbi Moshe Sofer, known as the Chatam Sofer, who is said to have kept a silver dreidel on his desk that he would have visitors spin as a way of publicizing the miracles performed for our ancestors.
Among hassidim, the great Rabbi Meir of Premishlan, whose grandfather was a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, would play dreidel with his students and children during Hanukkah, as did Rabbi Yerachmiel Moshe Hopstein, the sixth Rebbe of Kozhnitz.
Rabbi Aharon Rokeach, a Holocaust survivor who served as the fourth Belzer Rebbe, insisted on doing so as well.
What is the significance of the dreidel?
BUT THE question remains: What is the significance of the dreidel, and what can it say to us in the 21st century?
A well-known and beautiful explanation for its symbolism was offered by Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov (1783-1841), who was known as the Bnei Yissachar. He compared the dreidel, which is normally spun from above, with the grager, or noisemaker, that is used on Purim, which is spun from below.
This, he says, symbolizes how our salvation on Hanukkah came from above through a divine awakening and open miracles, such as the Hasmonean defeat of the much stronger Seleucid armies, as well as the cruse of oil in the Temple lasting for eight days.
On Purim, by contrast, the Jewish people were saved through miracles concealed within the natural course of events that were prompted by an awakening below, thanks to the advocacy and efforts of Esther and Mordechai.
Hence, on a macro level, the dreidel reminds us of God’s providential supervision over the world and the added measure of protection that He endows upon the Jewish people, a theme particularly resonant in these perilous times.
On a micro level, that of the individual, the spin of the dreidel signifies the fast pace and ever-changing nature of the world around us.
This point is highlighted in Sichot HaRan (40), a compilation of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov’s philosophy by his disciple Rabbi Natan, where it says, “In truth, know this. The whole world is a rotating wheel, like a dreidel. Everything turns around and reverses. Man becomes angel and angel becomes man. Head becomes foot and foot becomes head. Similarly, everything else in the world reverses, alternates, and swaps, from high to low and from low to high.”
In other words, the world is dynamic, not static, and it is filled with ups and downs that each of us experiences amid the spins of reality.
No less important, the dreidel embodies Jewish resilience and determination even in the face of unspeakable horror.
In her moving book Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, Prof. Yaffa Eliach relates how in 1943 a group of Jews in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp were intent on celebrating Hanukkah despite the unspeakable conditions.
The men, she writes, saved bits of fat from their meager portions of food to function as candles, while the women removed threads from their ragged clothing for wicks, with a raw potato serving as a makeshift hanukkiah. “Even dreidels for the children in the camp,” Eliach notes, “were carved out of the wooden shoes that inmates wore.”
And a number of years ago, during excavation work at Gross Rosen, another Nazi concentration camp, a number of dreidels were unearthed, indicating that the Jews who were held there somehow mustered the will to celebrate Hanukkah.
So whether playing dreidel is only several centuries old or dates back over two millennia to the time of the Maccabees is largely beside the point.
That innocent little top, with a Hebrew letter carved on each of its four sides, carries within it a great deal of Jewish history and inspiration, reminding us of days of yore while also urging us to keep on moving and spinning for as long as we can.
And that, I dare say, is a lesson for young and old alike.
The writer is founder of Shavei Israel (shavei.org), which assists lost tribes and other hidden Jewish communities to return to the Jewish people.