May 1, 2011

The four letters on the Dreidel (Nun, Gimel, Hei, Shin) are an acronym for the phrase "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham" (A great miracle happened there)

1. Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), or ש (Shin). The are an acronym for the phrase "נס גדול היה שם" (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – "a great miracle happened there" referring to the miracle of Hanukkah).
The letters of Dreidel also form a mnemonic for the rules of a gambling game played with the dreidel: Nun stands for the Yiddish word nisht ("nothing"), Hei stands for halb ("half"), Gimel for gants ("all"), and Shin for shtel arayn ("put in").

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