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Rabbi Dovid S. Polter, Community Chaplain
The Dreidel and the People
The dreidel teaches us an eternal verity about the Jewish people, and it depicts their past, present and future.
When G-d gave Avraham His blessing for children, He told him that they would be like the stars in heaven. Indeed, the Jewish people are like the heavenly stars. Just as the stars turn and glow under G-d’s momentum, so have the Jewish people been “turning” for thousands of years. What a wonder it is to behold: More than once it has seemed that the feeble Jewish dreidel is about to fall. Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Spain, Russia, Poland, Germany all came and blew mightily on this uniquely small dreidel in an attempt to fell it, but G-d always gave it another spin, and the Jewish people leaped back to life, with renewed vigor and courage, fighting to dance and spin more proudly, more energetically, than ever.
The dreidel has only one foot — one axis. It cannot stand at all; it can only spin. This has always been the situation of the Jews among the nations of the world. Throughout our exile we have spun on one foot; it was practically impossible for us to remain standing in one spot. We were without a foundation, without soil to stand on. Very often we had no choice but to spin on our “heads,” as a dreidel can be made to do — but we kept spinning away in what was virtually a feat of strength in motion.
It even came into the language as an idiom. Asked how they were managing with respect to livelihood, Jews often answer: “men dreit zich” — “Oh, one keeps spinning.”
It is different with the nations of the world. There have been great nations that have ruled mighty empires — but for how long? One after the other they have disappeared without a living trace. The nations of the world have been like dreidels spun by human hands — A twist, a spin, and they faltered and fell.
The dreidel of the Jewish people is eternal because that is the way G‑d created us and chose us to be. Weak, somewhat fragile, but we go on spinning forever — for so long as the world and the stars of the heavens go on spinning, so do the Jews on earth also continue to spin. It is G-d who controls our spinning, and He makes sure that it is never-ending.
The Jewish dreidel has one of the Hebrew letters, nun, gimmel, hei, and shin on each of its four sides. They stand for neis gadol hayah sham (נס גדול היה שם) — “a great miracle took place there.” Throughout our history, wherever we sojourned our existence was and will continue to be a great miracle.
These letters — נ' ג' ה' ש' — add up in their numerical value to 358 which is also the numerical equivalent of the word “Mashiach.” The significance of this is that the Final Redemption, the Messianic Redemption, will also be brought about by a twist of G‑d’s hand.
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Rabbi Dovid S. Polter Jewish Community Chaplaincy Program Jewish Senior Life 248-592-5039 • dpolter@jslmi.org
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