What do the symbols on a dreidel mean and how is the game played?
After a simple Yahoo! search on “dreidel” we were swamped with hundreds of sites, most of which looked relevant. So of course, we picked sites totally at random. Our first stop was Hagshama, which presented a plethora of information about the little four-sided top. For our purposes, however, we needed only a fraction of the information given on this page. The four letters on the top are Shin, Hey, Gimel, and Nun — they stand for the phrase, “Nes gadol hayah sham” which translates as, “A great miracle happened there.” In Israel the dreidel is a bit different. Instead of the “Shin” there is a “Pay.” With this change, the phrase means “Nes Gadol Hayah Po,” which translates as, “A great miracle happened here.” The game is played to commemorate the miraculous victory of a faithful few over the might
