Hanukah and the Dreidel Game

Hanukah is a Hebrew word, and it means “dedication.” The holiday of Hanukah celebrates an event that happened 165 years before Jesus was born. There was a Greek king in Syria by the name of Antiochus whose army had taken over Jerusalem and desecrated the Holy Temple that you can read about in the Torah. Antiochus had turned G-d’s temple into a place to worship the Greek god Zeus.

Antiochus wanted all of the Jewish people to give up their own religion and traditions and pray to

Greek gods, so they sent soldiers out into the small towns to try to force Jewish people to not be Jewish – to eat pork, for example. They came to the home town of a old High Priest (“Cohen”) named Mattitiahu, who refused to eat the pork that they put in front of him. This single act of Jewishness began a rebellion against Antiochus and his army.

Mattitiahu and his followers had to hide from the Syrian army in the wilderness; they were known as the Maccabees (a word that means “hammer,” because they would come out of the wilderness, attack the Syrian army and retreat again into the wild.) Mattitiahu made his son Judah the leader of the Maccabees.

Ultimately the Maccabees accomplished an amazing military feat – they pushed the Syrians out of the Holy Temple and took it back into Jewish hands. They had to clean it up, remove all of the Greek idols and make it clean enough to be worthy of the prayers and sacrifices to G-d that are mentioned in the Torah. When they looked for the purified oil used to light the Menorah (the seven-pointed candle holder in the Temple), they found that the Syrians had destroyed all but one bottle of oil.

Here’s the miracle: The process of purifying oil for Temple use takes eight days; the one bottle of oil was only enough for one day. Judah had a decision to make – should he wait a week before re-dedicating the Temple, so that the lights wouldn’t run out of oil, or should he re- dedicate the Temple right away? He chose to light the Menorah right away – and a miracle happened: One day’s worth of oil lasted eight days, until the newly purified oil was ready!

So for the 2,170 years since then, every year on the 25th of Kislev (a month on the Jewish calendar), the Jewish people have been celebrating this miracle by lighting candles on the Hanukiah – one new candle for each night of the 8-day holiday. Sometimes presents are given. Parents give their children “gelt” (“gelt” is the Yiddish word for money) – chocolate coins wrapped in foil – to teach the children the importance of sharing the abundance that G-d has given us.

The Dreidel is a four-sided spinning top. Before the Temple was reclaimed for the Jewish people, the Syrians wouldn’t allow Jews to study the Torah. When groups got together to study, they would keep a dreidel out on the table, so that if soldiers came along they could quickly hide their books and pretend that they had been playing with the dreidel instead of studying.

On the next page you’ll see how to play the dreidel game.