To make up for my recent lack of attention to this blog, I’m posting thoughts about Chanukah for each day of the eight-day festival. Today, I’m talking about:
SEVIVON
Sevivon is Hebrew for spinning top. In Yiddish, it’s called a dreidel.
Don McLean wrote a song about it.
On the each of the four vertical sides of the spinning top cube is a single letter that stand for a word in a sentence:
| נ – N | נס – Nes | miracle |
| ג – G | גדול – Gadol | big |
| ה – H | היה – Haya | was |
| פ – P | פה – Po | here |
In other words: A big miracle happened here.
But that’s only in Israel. In other countries, the last letter is ש – Sh, standing for שם – Sham, meaning: there.
I’m not sure I’ve ever played with a sevivon, but there’s a tradition of playing with it while the candles are alight, usually trying to win chocolate money or low denomination coins.
Miriam Drori, Author 