Women's League

Indeed, various Rabbis have tried to find an integral connection between the dreidel and the Hanukah story. The standard information is that the letter nun, gimmel, hey, shin appears in the dreidel in the Diaspora. It stands for nes, gadol, haya sham – “a great miracle happened there,” while in Israel the dreidel says nun, gimmel, hey, pey which means “a great miracle happened here.”

In the 19th century a Rabbi maintained the Jews played with the dreidel in order to fool the Greeks if they were caught studying Torah, which had been outlawed. Other figures put elaborate numerological explanation based on the fact every Hebrew letter has a numerical equivalent. The letters on the dreidel equals 358, which is the numerical equivalent of Mashiach or Messiah!

Finally the letters nun, gimmel, hey, shin, are supposed to represent the four kingdoms that tried to destroy us in ancient times. N – Nebuchadnezzar = Babylon, H - Haman = Persia, Madai, G – Gog -= Greece, S – Seir = Rome

The dreidel game originally had nothing to do with Hanukah, it has been played by various people in various languages for many centuries.