{"id":9638,"date":"2014-12-12T00:01:59","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T08:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=9638"},"modified":"2014-12-10T22:47:21","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T06:47:21","slug":"some-fun-facts-about-dreidels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/12\/12\/some-fun-facts-about-dreidels\/","title":{"rendered":"Some fun facts about dreidels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Major League Dreidel attracts many competitors. <\/span><em><span style=\"color: #000000;\">(photo from<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/majorleaguedreidel\" target=\"_blank\">facebook.com\/majorleaguedreidel<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">)<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The word dreidel is Yiddish, and comes from the German verb <em>dreihen<\/em>, meaning \u201cto spin.\u201d <em>Dreidel<\/em> literally means \u201clittle spinner.\u201d The first dreidel players were Yiddish-speaking Jews in medieval Europe. In fact, playing with tops has been a popular pastime across Western Europe since at least the 16th century!<\/p>\n<p>Many believe that the four letters on the dreidel \u2013 nun, gimel, hay and shin \u2013 were taken from the Hebrew expression \u201c<em>Nes gadol hayah sham<\/em>,\u201d meaning \u201ca great miracle happened there,\u201d referring to the miraculous events of the Chanukah story in ancient Israel. Really, this meaning was added later on. The letters originally represented the Yiddish instructions for what to do when you land on each one (Yiddish and Hebrew use the same alphabet): <em>gimel<\/em> for gantz, whole, take the whole pot; hay for <em>halb<\/em>, half, take half the pot; nun for <em>nisht<\/em>, nothing, don\u2019t take out or put in; and shin for <em>shtehl einl<\/em>, put in, i.e. put some of your coins into the pot.<\/p>\n<p>[vsw id=&#8221;x8w1uKyaDrc&#8221; source=&#8221;youtube&#8221; width=&#8221;425&#8243; height=&#8221;344&#8243; autoplay=&#8221;no&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>As the dreidel became a symbol associated with Chanukah, many legends began to stem from it. For example, the following one: When Antiochus decreed that Jewish law may no longer be studied in public, righteous Jews defied him and continued to teach Torah to their children. When they saw the king\u2019s henchman coming, groups of students would quickly hide their books and bring out their dreidels, pretending that they had merely gathered for a bit of fun and gambling.<\/p>\n<p>From those times to nowadays, dreidel spinning has even become a competitive sport. The group Major League Dreidel hosts tournaments each year in New York City and crowns a champion for the longest-lasting continuous spin.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Binyamin Kagedan<\/strong> <em>has a master\u2019s in Jewish thought from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Major League Dreidel attracts many competitors. (photo from facebook.com\/majorleaguedreidel) The word dreidel is Yiddish, and comes from the German verb dreihen, meaning \u201cto spin.\u201d Dreidel literally means \u201clittle spinner.\u201d The first dreidel players were Yiddish-speaking Jews in medieval Europe. In fact, playing with tops has been a popular pastime across Western Europe since at least [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781],"tags":[2517,2641],"class_list":["post-9638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-chanukah","tag-dreidel"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}