The spinning top Dreidel

#D-42011, Wood with silver plated brass.Height 10cm, Diameter 6cm.Signed by the artist The Spinning Top Dreidel was inspired by the wood spinning tops of the Far East.Since the spinning top is round, the challenge was to make the Dreidel stop ona letter. Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ-Nun,ג-Gimel, ה-Hei, פ-Pei, which are the first letters of the words Nes Gadol Hayah Poh(“A great miracle happened here”) referring to the miracle occurring in the land ofIsrael. These letters also form a mnemonic for the rules of a gambling game playedwith a dreidel: Nun stands for the Yiddish word nisht (“nothing”), Hei stands forhalb (“half”), Gimel for gants (“all”), and Pei for shtel arayn (“put in”).Some Jewish commentators ascribe symbolic significance to the markings onthe dreidel. One commentary, for example, connects the four letters with the fourexiles to which the nation of Israel was historically subject: Babylonia, Persia,Greece, and Rome.The pinnacle ball o