(AGENPARL) - Roma, 13 Dicembre 2022 - (AGENPARL) – mar 13 dicembre 2022 You are subscribed to Folklife Today Blog from the Library of Congress.
12/13/2022 03:30 PM EST
Hanukkah this year will be celebrated from December 18 to December 26. Jewish children all over the world will be playing a gambling game with a traditional spinning top known as a dreidel. Many of them will also be told stories about the origin and meaning of the dreidel, stories which claim that the dreidel once had a subversive purpose or that it was created to commemorate a great miracle. These stories are themselves interesting folklore. Since the dreidel is a traditional toy used to play a traditional game, such stories about the dreidel and game can be called metafolklore–that is, folklore about folklore. In this blog, we’ll take a look at some of these stories about the origin of the dreidel and examine the toy’s real history.