Description Blue wooden Dreidel. Size: 1.5″/3.8cm A dreidel or in Hebrew “Sevivon” is a four-sided spinning top, played during the of Chanukah. Each side of the dreidel has a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ (nun), ג (gimel), ה (hay), ש (shin). These letters represent, the Hebrew phrase nes gadol hayah sham or: “a great miracle happened there”, referring to the Chanukah. For this reason, most dreidels in Israel replace the letter Shin with a letter פ (pey), to represent the phrase nes gadol hayah poh (“a great miracle happened here”); It is interesting to note that many Haredi (Jewish Ultra religious) communities insist that the letter Shin which represents the word Sham (which means “There” in Hebrew) should be used in Israel as well, because they feel the reference to “there” means in the Holy Temple and not in the Land of Israel. And of course, the fun begins with the Chanukah candy game. The 4 letters on the Dreidel are also used to represent a Chanukah Dreidel game. Originating from the Yiddish language the rules of a gambling game are played as follows: Each person starts by adding candy to the “pot” and gets to spin the dreidel and gets to do what the letter they spun represents. Nun stands for the Yiddish word nisht (“nothing”) so you get nothing, Gimel for gants (“all”) so you take the whole pot, Hei for halb (“half”) so take half, and Shin for shtel ayn (“put in”) so add candy to the pot.
