3D Printed Dreidel Design Contest Just in Time for Chanukah

[Brian_Krassenstein]

As the holiday season approaches, the 3D printing community is ready to celebrate. The latest holiday event features a dreidel design competition, hosted in Brooklyn, NY. Tech Tribe is presenting a 3D Printed Menorah Lighting and Dreidel Design Competition on December 17, the first full day of Chanukah, bringing together technology and tradition (as well as He'Brew craft beer). Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone of OpenShabbat.org is one of the organizers of the event, and is excited to explore 3D printing's potential and bring it to traditional Jewish festivities. Check out more about the event: http://3dprint.com/28911/3d-printed-...l-competition/

[curious aardvark]

A dreidel (Yiddish: דרײדל dreydl plural: dreydlekh,^[1] Hebrew: סביבון‎ sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in many European cultures.
Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ (Nun), ג (Gimel), ה (Hei), ש (Shin), which together form the acronym for "נס גדול היה שם" (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – "a great miracle happened there"). These letters also form a mnemonic for the rules of a gambling game played with a dreidel: Nun stands for the Yiddish word nisht ("nothing"), Hei stands for halb ("half"), Gimel for gants ("all"), and Shin for shtel ayn ("put in"). In Israel, the fourth side of most dreidels is inscribed with the letter פ (Pei), rendering the acronym, נס גדול היה פה, Nes Gadol Hayah Poh—"A great miracle happened here" referring to the miracle occurring in the land of Israel. Some stores in Haredi neighborhoods sell the ש dreidels.
According to Jewish tradition, when the Jews were in caves learning Torah, hiding from the Seleucids, dreidel became a popular game to play. Legend has it that whenever the teacher heard the Seleucids soldiers approaching, he would instruct the children to hide their Torah scrolls and take out their dreidels instead.

Huh, who knew ? (not me, that's for sure).