During the time of the Maccabees, Jews were
imprisoned for the "crime" of studying Torah. While in jail, these
Jews would gather together to play dreidel. Under the guise of idling away
their time, they’d engage in Torah discussions and thus defy the enemies of
Judaism.
Every dreidel has four sides with one Hebrew letter on each side. Each of
these letters begins a word. The four letters are:
Nun – the first
letter of the word nes, which means "miracle"
Gimmel – the first letter of gadol, which means "great"
Hey – the first letter of haya, which means "was"
Shin – the first letter of sham, which means "there"
This supposedly stands for the Hebrew phrase "nes gadol hayah sham", a great miracle happened there.
Actually, it stands for the Yiddish words nit (nothing), gantz (all), halb (half) and shtell (put), which are the rules of the game! There are some variations in the way people play the game, but the way I learned it, everyone puts in one coin.
A person spins the dreidel.
On Nun, nothing happens;
on Gimmel (or, as we called it as kids, "gimme!"), you get the whole pot;
on Heh, you get half of the pot;
and on Shin, you put one in.
When the pot is empty, everybody puts one in. Keep playing until one person has everything. Then
re-divide it, because nobody likes a poor winner.
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