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After a simple Yahoo! search on "dreidel" we were swamped with hundreds of sites, most of which looked relevant. So of course, we picked sites totally at random. Our first stop was Hagshama, which presented a plethora of information about the little four-sided top. For our purposes, however, we needed only a fraction of the information given on this page. The four letters on the top are Shin, Hey, Gimel, and Nun -- they stand for the phrase, "Nes gadol hayah sham" which translates as, "A great miracle happened there." In Israel the dreidel is a bit different. Instead of the "Shin" there
is a "Pay." With this change, the phrase means "Nes Gadol Hayah Po," which translates as, "A great miracle happened here." The game is played to commemorate the miraculous victory of a faithful few over the might of the Greek Empire. Each player starts by putting something into the kitty; some of the more popular item are raisins, nuts, or chocolate coins (Hanukkah gelt). The players then take turns spinning the dreidel. A player's fate is decided when the dreidel stops: - "Nun" stands for "nisht" which means "nothing." The player wins nothing.
- "Gimmel" stands for "gantz" which means "all." The player wins the entire pot.
- "Heh" stands for "halb" which means "half." The player wins half the pot. If there is an odd number of tokens, the player takes the extra token.
- "Shin" stands for "shtel" which means "put in." The player must put two of his own tokens in the pot.
If you would like to play the game but don't have a dreidel, it's very easy to make one. Or, you can always play the online version.
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