Second grade students play with dreidels and chocolate gold coins. (Credit: Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
Dating back to before the Maccabee revolt, dreidels (four-sided spinning tops used to play a gambling game) were originally used as a type of decoy after the Greek-Syrian armies of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes enacted a series of laws outlawing many Jewish religious practices. The Jewish people simply moved their studies of the Torah underground, pulling out their dreidels and pretending to play games to confuse soldiers. Since then, dreidel has been resurrected as a fun game played during Hanukkah for chocolate coins called gelt, to commemorate this time. Each side of the dreidel has a different Hebrew letter, which tells the player how much to put in, or take out, of the pot. Together, these four letters form the acronym for “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham,” which means “a great miracle happened there,” referring to the miracle of the oil lasting eight days in Israel.
