1630: Dreidl Markings Jun 1, 2019

A dreidl, spelt in a variety of different ways, is a kind of top found traditionally in many different European cultures. In Jewish traditions however, they are 4-sided with each side having a different letter: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), ש (Shin). These stand in for Yiddish words, here transliterated; the Nun for 'nisht' ("nothing"), Hei for 'halb' ("half"), Gimel for 'gants' ("all"), and Shin for 'shtel ayn' ("put in"). These are more or less translations of the German equivalents, but these days many think of them as coming from the Hebrew phrase, transliterated, 'nes gadol hayah sham' ("a great miracle happened there"), and even in some parts of the word the Shin is swapped for a פ (Peh) to mean 'here' instead, but this is not true. More will be discussed about this in tomorrow's post.