History of the dreidel 
by Fern Goldman
December 28, 2024

This has been billed as A Brief History of the dreidel, with apologies to Stephen Hawking, But actually, this d’var about OTHER brief histories and includes many SPINS, from Chris Nolan to Jonathan Haidt to Yuval Harari. From facts to fiction. to shades of in between. And we’ll cross some time lines, from past to present to future.  Come and spin with me:)

Spin #1 /  an article from my jewish learning on a brief origin of the dredel
 
://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-origin-of-the-dreidel/

The article gives a spin that In England and Ireland there is a game called totum or teetotum that is especially popular at Christmas. In English, this game is first mentioned as “totum” , around 1500-1520. The name comes from the Latin “totum,” which means “all.” By 1720, the game was called T- totum, and by 1801 the four letters already represented four words in English: T = Take all; H = Half; P = Put down; and N = Nothing.
 
Accordingly, our Eastern European game of dreidel (with letters nun, gimmel, hey, shin) is directly based on the German equivalent of the totum game: N = Nichts = nothing; G = Ganz = all; H = Halb = half; and S = Stell ein = put in. In German, the spinning top was called a “torrel” or “trundl,” and in Yiddish it was called a “dreidel,” a “fargl,” a “varfl” [= something thrown], “shtel ein” [= put in], and “gor, gorin” [= all].
 
When Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, the dreidel was called, among other names, a sevivon, which is the noun that caught on.
 
Guess what! nun, gimmel, hey, shin in gematria equals 358, which is also the numerical equivalent of mashiach or Messiah!
 
So,  the dreidel game can be seen to represent an IRONY of Jewish history. To celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah, which celebrates our victory over cultural assimilation, we play dreidels--in  itself is an excellent example of cultural assimilation. Go figure.

Spin #2/
 
Keeping with brief—Apologies to Stephen Hawking and a quick nod to his bestseller– A Brief History of Time. 

Hawking explained Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – there's always at least a measure of  uncertainty of the position and velocity of a particle in space. This could apply to a spinning dreidel–as we know, it could go here and there–koh va’ cho, landing on one of four possibilities. To add POLITICAL spin– According to an article in HaAretz in 2018, Dr Hawking had a complicated relationship with Israel. He first accepted, then refused to attend an international gathering in Jerusalem to  honour Shimon Perez’ 90th birthday.  As a supporter of  the BDS movement he withdrew his attendance when pressured by BDS.  Ironically, his communication microchips were designed by Israelis, and an Israeli scientist’s ideas on black holes formed the basis of Hawking’s revolutionary theories on the subject!

Spin #3    The movie Inception, a sort of horror near-future film by Chris Nolan made in 2010  stars Leonardo  de Caprio as Dom Cobb, a corporate espionage agent tasked to infiltrate a target’s dream state, both to extract info and implant new directives. Cobb re-oriented a person’s subconscious, to bequeath assets to Cobb’s own company.  As Cobb infiltrates the targets’ minds, his personal weapon of escape is a large spinning top. While it spins he knows he himself is in a dream state. When the top falls he awakens. Think about the mesmerizing effect of watching a dreidel spin. And also the power implied when OUR minds are seeded with the force of others’ suggestions,
 
Speaking of which…
 
Spin #4   the effect of the internet, social media in particular, on young minds.  Dr Jonathan Haidt, a  social psychologist is author of   The Anxious Generation —How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Dr Haigt says that with our constant, addictive use of cell phones, our brains are essentially being hacked! We have overprotected our kids from physical harm in the real world– we stopped letting kids take physical risks in the street and in the playgrounds. But this is exactly what kids need to do…explore and take chances. Instead, we’ve allowed young children to be programmed by online algorithms. Haidt speaks of his personal experience almost 10 years ago–when his then-six year old cried out, daddy, help me get off the screen I cant stop myself from playing this game! THAT’s how powerful the designers of such amusements are…intentionally drawing us ever more into black holes of compulsive and addictive activities, for their own monetary gain.

In 2010 kids started having phones—the flip variety for calls only. By 2015 iphones and  “smart”devices and apps have seduced kids to live their lives online.  Phones now can fill our complete consciousness. We know that negative mental health has become of crisis proportions. Anxiety, depression, blatant sexuality online, bullying, incitement to suicide and violence …because the vector of the internet is everywhere. I was witness to the beginning stages 7 years ago, just before leaving the school board and am very grateful that phones in classrooms are now legislated as verboten.
 
With the algorithms hijacking us and our children’s minds there is a decreasing lack of accountability. Haidt advocates NO PHONES till age 14, no social media till age 16  AND let’s help restore the deveolpmental stages of childhood that we have allowed to be drowned in cyber spaces.  How do we regain control of our very agency over our thoughts? 

Spin #5   Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari  has two books of  brief histories— Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, and Homo Deus–A Brief History of Tomorrow. He asks how is it that starting some  70 000 years ago  humans have come to rule the planet,  from being as inconsequential as flies, amphibians and primates?  Harari’s thesis is …what distinguishes us from chimps is not the genius of individual humans, but having evolved LANGUAGE, we  built a  collective  capacity to COOPERATE in large numbers.
 
Chimps can develop social intimacy in relatively small groups of  100-150, while HUMANS form large networks OF COOPERATIVE ACTIVITIES. We  invent fictional stories…and that’s why we control the world. Our fictions include corporations, politics, money, religion, human rights, heaven and God? While not everyone believes in G*d, many do believe in money. And some do believe in G*d:)  The best storytellers are bankers, says Harari.  A chimp would not be persuaded to exchange a loonie for a banana..she’ d just help herself to the fruit. But here we are, exchanging currency for goods…and so on.
 
Humans live in a dual reality ..our fictions (or stories) are superimposed upon our natural world, even as we desecrate and fail to protect the planet from ourselves.  The chimps have it relatively easier, living in an immediate,  non-verbal constructed framework, and they do far less harm than we do.
 
Even as we “buy into” collective fabrications of reality, life is actually shifting under our feet. What we experienced as “reality”  only 20 years ago is now being usurped by social media, mis and dis-information, fake news, AI . To keep hammering this point to boredom…Our own agency and authority are being manipulated by algorithms..just think how agent Google feeds us personal preferences.,along with varied fictions we are free to drink like Kool Aid. Are you getting worried? I am, and as neo-reality writer and artist Doulas Coupland postered, I miss my pre-internet brain!
 
Shades of the world’s best dystopian novel==1984. Winston Smith’s only agency was his speck of dust in his diary, but Big Brother manipulated that too.
 
My apologies to you.  I have failed to take light hearted spins with these thoughts, as I was induced to do. At the least, maybe I’ve produced a zoomout state of meditation, to allow your thoughts to go elsewhere. To  conclude on a lighter note,  I think there are many undiscovered uses for our dredels. How about toe spacers instead of the drugstore slash Amazon variety? If the handle is replaced with a dowel rod, a drop spindle to spin wool? Maybe, like Maman our gigantesque sculpture at the National Gallery, we can spin a  virtual world-wide web of peace around the globe, with fellow Jews, allies and folks of other persuasions?
 
I also think I missed an opportunity 
with this dvar. This week in Mikketz we learned that Joseph interpreted dreams for  Pharoah. Rabbi Marc Angel wrote that G*d implants in us all our abilities to think and do in the world. We do have agency on how we use the gifts we are given. It's good to be remember that the spins of the world do not have to unbalance nor influence us.
 
Unlike Harari who thinks our faith and religion will fail to help us navigate life in the future, leaving it all in the non-animate “hands’ of the algorithms, I advocate we continue to turn to Torah and our community to stay grounded in our humanity. Let’s keep all that close, k’mo kedem.. our days past, in the way it’s been throughout our collective history. 
 
And for us all, a bracha. May the spinning dreidel induce gentler, greener kinder spins for you and your loved ones. May our dredels create waves of good energy that propel us to spaces and times where we envision we WANT to be, closer to our loved ones and to our Creator. 
 
Chag sa' mayach v'shavuah tov:)
Fern