The Secrets of the Dreidel
In a few days, Jewish families around the world begin celebrating Chanukah. We light candles, eat potato pancakes, sing, and spin a small four-sided device called a dreidel.
On the surface, spinning a dreidel is like flipping a coin or turning over a card. The spin lands the dreidel on one of four Hebrew letters.
The particular letter determines the reward, which is a chocolate coin known as gelt. But the dreidel does much more than keep children entertained. It offers a stunning message about history and survival.
The spinning dreidel symbolizes the topsy-turvy shifts of Jewish history, and each letter symbolizes an empire and era. Through it all God has been our guiding light.
“A Great Miracle Happened There”
The letters of the dreidel have typically been understood as an acronym. The letters are nun, gimel, hey, and shin. They form the first letters of a Hebrew phrase meaning, "A great miracle happened there."
That miracle was finding a tin of oil hidden in the temple after the end of the Maccabean war. The oil lasted eight days instead of one night.
"There" is the land of Israel, where the Maccabees lived and the Temple stood. They had rededicated the temple to God after defeating the Seleucids, who had contaminated the temple.
But what if each letter represents more than just a word? According to the Jewish mystics, each letter represents an empire.
These empires attained great power. Each also persecuted the Jewish people. Ultimately, each empire fell. And the Jewish people survived.
Empires 1 and 2
The first empire is Babylon. The Babylonians destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and exiled many Jewish leaders in 586 BCE.
This event could have been the beginning of the end of Judaism. How did Jews survive? By seeing the Babylonians as delivering a message from God for change.
That was the message of the prophet Jeremiah. Jews and Judaism ultimately emerged stronger from the destruction.
The next empire was the Persians. They conquered the Babylonians.
Initially, the Persian empire seemed positive. Their king, Cyrus, allowed Jews to rebuild the Temple in 531 BCE and generally left the people alone so long as they paid their taxes.
Over time, however, power corrupts, and the Persian empire became more powerful and more corrupt. It ultimately split into warring regions when Alexander the Great died, and Jews became an easy target for one group to prove their power and mettle over the others.
Greeks and Romans
The collapse of the Persian empire ultimately led to the rise of the Greeks and their Hellenist culture. Its leaders sought to force Jews to worship Greek gods and practice customs like nude sports, which Jews rejected.
That rejection is what we commemorate during Chanukah. Jews survived by maintaining their cultural independence amidst the powerful forces of assimilation and conformity.
The Greeks were ultimately conquered by the Romans. The Roman empire began like the Persian one. Jews lived freely so long as they paid their taxes. But as power of the Roman empire grew, so did its ambitions.
Ultimately, the Roman wars between between 66 and 70 C.E. led to the destruction the Second Temple and the global dispersion of the Jewish people.
But Judaism survived, s Roman persecution led to religious innovation and the rise of rabbinical Judaism. This new expression of Judaism centered on the synagogue rather than the Temple in Jerusalem.
The rabbis replaced the priests as the spiritual leaders of the nation. And the study of God's word became a religious imperative. Crisis led to creativity.
We find all of this history captured in four letters on the little spinning fidget called a dreidel.
What does the future hold? Only God knows. But we'll continue to light candles in the darkness.