Dreidel

A wooden dreidel

A Dreidel (סביבון,דרעידעל) is a four-sided top which is played in the Hanukkah season by Jewish people. It is game of luck which uses candy, coins or other betting tokens.

Rules

The players start out with 10 or 15 tokens. Each player puts one token in the pot. The Dreidel has four sides. נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), and ש (Shin). Nun means that the player does nothing. Gimel means that the player gets all the tokens from the pot. Hei means that the player gets half of the tokens from the pot. And Shin means that the player has to put one token in the pot.

If the Pot is empty, each player puts one token in the pot. If the pot has an odd number of tokens, one player puts one token in the pot. The player is out if he/she runs out of tokens. Whoever is left standing, or has the most tokens at the end wins the game.

Dreidel Media

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  Dreidels for sale at Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, Israel, with Israel specific lettering on blue dreidels (נ ג ה פ) and diaspora lettering on orange dreidels (נ ג ה ש)

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  Ancient Middle Eastern top resembling a dreidel

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  Three-dimensional model of a dreidel

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  Photo of the world's most valuable dreidel, valued at $70,000 in 2019

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  Fine Russian antique dreidel

Other websites

• Dreidel Wizard
• The Origin of the Dreidel Archived 2006-09-05 at the Wayback Machine
• Computer program that plays the dreidel game (with full Java source code)
• Dreidel Design Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
• Types of Dreidels