Hanukkah Hebrew Challenge

Here’s how it works: 

The Goal

Over the seven weeks until Hanukkah, you will learn:

• The symbols and the names of 10 Hebrew letters
• Four Hebrew words
• How to play dreidel
• The phrase that those four letters stand for that connects the dreidel to Hanukkah

AND, if you pass the test, win a prize!

Contest Rules

You can be any age.

You have to have no previous knowledge of the Hebrew Letters to participate. (Well, if you vaguely know one or two letters, OK… but not the whole aleph-bet. You know what I mean. Play fair!) 

How to Play

Each week, from November 7 through December 19, there will be a link with a self-guided lesson in the Or Shalom Newsletter. 

On Dec. 19, The newsletter will have a link to a Zoom session with a Quiz, and whoever passes, will get a prize of a really nice dreidel, and a print of Rabbi Me’irah’s painting: The Aleph-Bet. (see below) So, look for Lesson #1 in next week’s newsletter!

Questions? Write to RabbiMeirah@OrShalomsf.org

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Hanukkah Hebrew Challenge Lesson #3

 

NOTE: If you need a refresher, or are just joining the challenge, scroll down below to review Lessons #1 & #2.

Today’s lesson is a big one… the biggest one we will have. So I think we should call it gadole…BIG! 

Here’s the plan for today:
Goals: 
–Learn what the letters Hey & Shin stand for on the dreidel.

–Learn three (!!!) more Hebrew letters, so we can spell out gadole (which is usually transliterated as gadol): Dalet, Vav & Lamed

The last two letters on the dreidel stand for the following words: 

The letter Hey stands for the word Ha-yah, meaning ‘was’ or ‘happened’ (from the verb ‘to be’).

Our dreidel isn’t simply a fun toy. It’s a reminder of an historic event, so that we will remember a part of Jewish history. It’s reminding us that the Maccabees, a small band of guerilla fighters, won a battle against the Romans on Kislev 25, 164 BCE, (Before the Common Era—rather than saying “BC–Before Christ.) and took back control of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. 

(I really don’t get how this happened…miraculous…)

Here's how the story goes: The Temple, THE central place of worship for the Jewish people, was a mess. Pigs had been allowed to wander in. The people cleaned it all up, and went to light the seven branched menorah, but found only one cruse (clay vessel) of special consecrated olive oil with the priestly seal on it  still intact. It should have been only enough oil for one day, but miraculously, it lasted 8 days, long enough to prepare more oil to keep the lamp alight. 

A more complex and nuanced story is how a small people were able to persist and endure, even against formidable odds, so that we can be here today to celebrate Hanukkah, an historic holiday that occurred way after the Torah came to be.

Even more complex and nuanced, there was class warfare… and the temple priests at that time were more beholden to the Roman rulers than to the common Jewish people… but that’s a longer story. 

Here is a reliable Resource: 

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/?s=Hanukkah

Back to the Aleph-Bet and the second goal for this week.

We are going to spell Gadol, and that requires 3 new letters!  Dalet, Vav, and Lamed

Dalet. Can you see the doorway? 

Lamed. See the LONG extension upward? Sounds like an L

And Vav…who sometimes wants to be a vowel, and sometimes a consonant. In our word Gadol, it wants to be a vowel with an ‘oh’ sound. That’s why it’s wearing a little hat (dot–see it in the word below) and saying, “Oh! It’s so COLD outside!"

So now we have all the letters to spell out Gadol, meaning ‘great’ (or big)....

 Reading from right to left: gimmel, dalet, vav, lamed. 

Nes Gadol, or נס גדול, a great miracle. (or literally,”miracle great.”) 

Can you read it? Mazal Tov! You have completed lesson #3!

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Hanukkah Hebrew Challenge Lesson #2 

Each letter on the dreidel stands for a word, giving us an important message, but in a sort of code. To others, it just looks like kids playing a gambling game. But to the players, we are remembering a remarkable event in Jewish history. We’ll learn part of the message this week, and the rest of it next week. 

Here is what the first two letters stand for: 

Nun: Nes–A miracle, (a noun, which is a person, place or thing)

Gimmel: Gadole–Big, or great (an adjective–describes a noun)

(accent on the second syllable) 

So the two words are: Nes Gadole…. A BIG miracle! 

Try saying it at least three times, til it feels smoothe. 

And here’s a new letter: Samech (accent on the first syllable) It sounds just like an S in English.

 

The ‘ch’ at the end of the word Samech sounds like the end of the Scottish word , Loch (meaning lake.) 

 (The ‘ch’ does NOT sound like the ch in chicken!) 

When we put the nun and the samech together, we have the word for miracle: Nes. 

When you play dreidel this week, wonder what the big miracle could be….

REVIEW:

Identify the nun, the gimmel, the hay, the shin and the samech below:

(That’s five Hebrew letters already!!!) 

Remember, the gimmel is a camel

The hay has a hole in it

The nun is nice and neat

The samech makes a circle

If you print this page, write the names of each letter above the drawing of the letter. 

Extra credit: Try drawing the letters yourself, saying the name of the letter out loud as you draw it. (Check back to last week’s lesson to make sure you are naming them correctly!) 

Blessings, and see you next week! 

 

Lesson # 1

Welcome to the first of seven lessons in the Hanukkah Hebrew Challenge!

Our goal for this week is to learn the names and sounds of the letters on the Hanukkah dreidel, and how to play dreidel.

There are four sides to the dreidel, each one having a Hebrew letter. The names of the letters are: 

(Warning! We read Hebrew from right to left!)

From right to left, they sound like our letters 

N, G, H, and “SH”

And here’s how to play Dreidel:

Any number of people can play. Tokens can be almonds or pistachios with shells, chocolate chips, raisins, pennies…Whatever!  (But be careful not to eat your stash before the game is over!) 

To begin, each person puts 5-10 tokens into the central ‘pot.’ 

Each person takes a turn spinning the dreidel. If it lands on 

Nun, nothing happens

Gimmel, take the WHOLE pot!

Hey, take half

Shin, put one in.

If the pot becomes empty, everyone add five tokens to begin again. 

Go ahead and play dreidel, and see if you can memorize the names of the letters.  

Optional further study:

The Interactive Hebrew Alphabet - NJOP

That’s it for this week! See you next week.