QUESTION:
the playing of dreidel is accepted in all circles.
Why did it receive such acceptance?
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ANSWER:
The dreidel teaches us an eternal verity about the Jewish people, Hashem's chosen people, and it depicts their past, present, and future. When Hashem gave Avraham His blessing for children, He told him that they would be like the stars in heaven (Bereishit 16:5). And indeed, the Jewish people are like the heavenly stars. Just as the stars turn under Hashem's momentum, so has 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 pitifully small dreidel in an attempt to fell it, but Hashem always gave it another spin, and the Jewish people leaped back to life, with renewed vigor and courage, virtually dancing, spinning 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 a soil, to stand on. Very often we even 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 perpetual motion. It even came into the language as an idiom. Asked how they were managing with respect to livelihood, Jews often answer: "men dreid zich" — "Oh, one keeps spinning." 
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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. (See the quote below.) The nations of the world have been like dreidels spun by human hands — the hands of autocrats, despots, dictators, and tyrants who made their countries great but only for a short while. 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 Hashem who controls our spinning, and He makes sure that it be never-ending. The Jewish dreidel has one of the Hebrew letters, nun, gimmel, hei, and shin on each of its four sides. This stands for neis gadol hayah sham (נס גדול היה שם) — a great miracle took place there. Yes, throughout our history, wherever we sojourned, our existence was a great miracle. These letters add up 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.. "The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” |