I Want a Dreidel

[Lady Rachel]

... and I decided that one of you should buy me one.

I don't know the "rules" of the game, or how it's played, other than spinning it like a top.

I have a jewish friend, and I told him I wanted one, and he just asked me "why?" and laughed at me because he thought I was weird.

None the less... I do want one. Really bad.

[mangelmoni19]

Each side of the dreidel is bearing a letter: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), ש (Shin), which stands as an acronym for "נס גדול היה שם" (Nes Gadol Haya Sham – "a great miracle happened there"). Nun means none, hei means half, gimel means all and shin means put in. In Israel, instead of ש (Shin), the letter פ (Pe) is written to symbolize the location of the miracle — "פה" (Po – "here").

The yiddish word "dreidel" comes from the German word "drehen" ("turn"). The Hebrew word "sevivon" comes also from the root "sov" ("turn") and was invented by Itamar Ben-Avi, the son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, when he was 5 years old. Before that, different terms were used by Hayyim Nahman Bialik in his poems.

[Apricky]

^I guess we do have one Jewish member!!

WELCOME!!