Dreidel is a game of luck, not skill. What’s so Jewish about that? Photo by iStock

Senior Reporter Beth Harpaz December 19, 2022

I love playing dreidel. I love the randomness of it, how it hardly takes any skill once you’ve mastered twisting the top just right and letting it rip for a good, long spin.

I love how it equalizes the players. A 5-year-old could best a grown-up, as my great-nephew did when I brought my dreidel collection to Florida to play with him a week ago. “I spinned it good!” he declared.

Last year, I took my dreidels to LA and got a bunch of 30- and 40-somethings down on the floor for a game. A Russian immigrant who’d never played before beat us all. And this past weekend, I played with my soccer-loving twin cousins and their grandmother. One child won the first round; Grandma won the second.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

I love how it makes us pay attention. My son’s college friends came over one Hanukkah, all dressed up en route to an event much cooler than latkes at my house. But even they spent a good long while spinning dreidels in crazy swirling loops on my old parquet floor.

I love how beautiful it is when a dreidel really gets going, how we can’t help but smile when it spins so fast that it’s just a blur, and the relief we feel — even when we lose — when it finally slows and drops and reveals the player’s fate.

The Hebrew letters

And I love how it connects us to Hanukkah. The letters on each of the dreidel’s four sides — nun, gimel, hey, shin — sign the story in Hebrew (Nes gadol haya sham, meaning “A great miracle happened there”). But they also supply directions in Yiddish for how to play: nisht (nothing), gants (all), halb (half), shtel (put).

But then I get to thinking: Playing dreidel is so un-Jewish. It’s not about merit or skill, or hard work, or talent, or doing some good deed — all things we value religiously and culturally. It’s just about whether your dreidel lands on nun, gimel, hey or shin. Maybe you’ll have to put a penny in, or maybe you’ll get half the pot. Maybe you’ll get everything — or maybe you’ll end up with nothing.

That luck of the draw reminds me of something a friend’s mother once said. She was a hidden child in Holland during the war; in fact, she wrote an award-winning book about it, The Upstairs Room. Her name is Johanna Reiss, and she’s been compared to Anne Frank — except that she survived.

A survivor’s perspective

In times of trouble — after 9/11, for example, or during the pandemic’s darkest days — I’ve asked my friend, “What does Johanna say?” Inevitably, her mom is as stalwart as ever. I even keep this quote from her taped to my fridge to reread from time to time: “Life has these bumps, it’s not divided fairly. One gets none of it and others oodles, who knows why. It’s an art to stay tough, we have it. There’s always tomorrow with who knows what kind of good news, or the day after. We give in for a bit but not up.”

Kind of like playing dreidel: One player gets nothing; another gets it all. You never know what fate might have in store.

And then I think, isn’t that a Jewish story, too? A kid on the street might curse you out or grab your kippah or draw a swastika on your synagogue door. A  celebrity or politician might call you names. A country might even kick you out or round you up or worse.

Like Johanna said, life has these bumps; it’s not fair. We give in for a bit, but we don’t give up. And maybe that makes dreidel the most Jewish game of all.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount