The Dreidel: What A Hanukkah Tradition Can Teach Us About Banned Education

If all you know about the dreidel is that at one point someone made one out of clay and wrote a song about it, you would not be alone. Along with the menorah (or, to be more specific, the nine-armed hanukiah used in the celebration of Hannukah) and the latke, the dreidel is one of Hannukah’s most recognizable symbols; it finds its way onto socks, cardboard cutouts, and sweaters.

But the dreidel and the game that carries the same name is far more than a holiday tradition with some light gambling. It is part of a cohesive story that runs through many Jewish traditions. The story that Jewish children are told about the dreidel is one of cultural preservation in the face of non-Jews attempting to stamp out our shared cultural identity. And in a world where classical and traditional education is under threat, the story carries lessons for us all.

The dreidel game is played with a simple four-sided top often made from wood. On its four sides are the Hebrew letters נ‎ (nun), ג‎ (gimel), ה‎ (hei), and ש‎ (shin). They represent the sentence “a great miracle happened there,” and, in Israel, many dreidels bear the letter פ‎ (pe) instead of a shin so it reads “a great miracle happened here.” The miracle the dreidel refers to is, of course, the sacred oil in the Temple lasting eight days rather than one.

When playing the game, all players ante a chocolate coin called gelt into a shared pot and spin the dreidel to see what they will win. With a gimel, you get the full pot; a hei, half the pot; a nun, nothing; and, as the saying goes, “with a shin you put one in.” It’s a fun game for children, and one of the few times that you win more than you lose while gambling. It’s pleasant to play under the lights of a Menorah, but the story Jewish children are told of the game’s origin is vastly more important.

The story told to Jewish children is that during the time of the Maccabees' revolt against the Greeks, the study of Torah was banned. The Second Temple of Jerusalem was desecrated, rededicated to Zeus, and idols were erected. Like many times in Jewish history, Jews were given the choice to “convert or die.” The Jews were not allowed to practice their faith, and part of that was a ban on the teaching of Hebrew.

For most of Jewish history, Jews spoke Yiddish or other languages to each other and Hebrew was primarily the language of religion and scholarship. It was a vital link between the people and their sacred texts. In order to teach their children their holy language, Jews inscribed dreidels with Hebrew letters. When questioned by soldiers, they could say that their children were simply playing a game and not studying Torah.

Now, this story is almost certainly folklore. It is likely that the dreidel game was developed much later than the time of the Maccabees, but the story still matters in the Jewish consciousness. Jews having to hide our Jewishness, our practice of our faith, and the passing on of our traditions to the next generation is a consistent thread running through the story that is Judaism. There is a reason that we tell our children during the Passover Seder “this is what happened to me when I was a slave in Egypt.”

We prepare our children to have to fight for their identity. I don’t need to tell you about the current rising tide of antisemitism in the world. 

What I remember taking away from this story all those years ago when I first learned about it was how courageous those children were. To risk punishment and to have to hide from authority that you are learning something so important to who you are that there is no way you can simply set it aside was, to me, reminiscent of the Maccabees themselves taking up arms against the occupiers.

Although the folklore behind the dreidel fits into that quintessentially Jewish narrative, it is worth thinking about in the broader conversation about education. Ask yourself, what is important enough to teach your children that you would risk the state’s ire? Who is trying to stamp out tradition and language much like the Greeks tried to stamp out Judaism? What idols are being erected and what temples are being desecrated? You might just find playing the dreidel game reminds you that there are traditions worth preserving.