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The Third Night of Hanukkah: Gelt

Posted by Kerry Saretsky, December 23, 2008 at 8:00 PM

Jewish guilt may be something that many of us have to live with throughout the year, but for the next eight blissful days of Hanukkah, Jewish gelt becomes more prevalent. Gelt, which means money or coins in Hebrew, is the currency of the dreidel, a spinning top with four sides that dictate the stakes of the gambling game. Perhaps it is impolite to play with your food. It is also a bad idea to eat fried food for eight days straight. Hanukkah gets us off the hook on both counts—a week and a day of positive dining abandon, and a festival of not being quite so light the week after next.

Wikipedia informs us that during the 20th century, American confectioners started making gelt from chocolate to sweeten the holiday—as if dreidel victory weren’t sweet enough for us competitive types. The rules are simple: spin the dreidel and put one chocolate coin in the pot to start the game. If your dreidel lands on nun, נ, nothing happens. If it lands on gimel, ג, you get all the chocolate coins in the pot. If it lands on hey, ה, you get half. And if, unlucky you, you land on shin, ש, you lose one of your own coins back to the pot. Better luck next time. After the game, sit around and peel the metallic gold back off the milk chocolate with your teeth, and lick the warm chocolate coins off their resilient wrappers.

In my house, we rarely remember to buy manufactured gelt (or dreidels, really, for that matter), but if we happen to find a dreidel, we usually play for shards of dark chocolate, pieces of cold latke, or real money—which is, after all, real Jewish gelt. And unlike the latkes and the chocolate, playing for money is positively guilt-free.

What do you spin the dreidel for?

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Tags: chocolate, Hanukkah, holidays