Hanukka
"What do you know?
You know just what you perceive.
What can you show?
Nothing of what you believe.
And as you grow, each thread of life that you leave
Will spin around your deeds and dictate your needs
As you sell your soul and you sow your seeds
And you wound yourself and your loved one bleed
And your habits grow, and your conscience feeds
On all that you thought you should be
I never thought this could happen to me.
I feel like a spinning top or a dreidel.
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle.
You just slow down.
Round and around the world you go
Spinning through the lives of the people you know.
We all slow down.
How you gonna keep on turning from day to day?
How you gonna keep from turning your life away? Oh..
I feel like a spinning top or a dreidel.
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle.
You just slow down."
-- Songwriter, Don Mclean, Dreidel
A child's game is our life. The dreidel dances, spins, falls, and spins again. The children play, bet, shout and squeal when they win. So it is with us. We piroutte with practiced ease. And as we slow down with age we begin to ask, "Where have I been?"
And yet as the days of Light approach, Hanukka, we become more aware of who we are and what we have been doing.
Here is Rebbe Nachman's understanding of the meaning of the four letters on the side of the spinning top, the dreidel:
"Heh is Hiyuli, primordial; Nun is Nivdal, the transcendental; Gimel is Galgal, the celestial; Shin is Shafal, the physical."
The letters on the dreidel then are a jumble, a blurry mix. In the whirling dreidel time has no bearing, one universe becomes enmeshed with the other. The order that the Lord imposed on the cosmos at the Beginning, transforming it from a thick cauldron of unmeaning is echoed by gyrations of the dreidel. The children's game brings us back to a distant past.
Remember: Hanukka is about the Hidden Light. Secreted in the deep recesses of the defiled Temple lies the single cruse of oil that will restore a nation to God.
That is the very same light that God created at the outset of the Torah. The first light of Day One is not the sort of light that is created by the sun (Day Four) but rather a pious light for the righteous. It can only be found by,
1. Knowing it exists and
2. Seeking it.
On Hanukka we read the tale of finding and restoring the light. We then reenact the story by recovering that which is still hidden. In part, awareness of the hidden nature of the Light is made known to us by the child's top.
Here is more from Rebbe Nachman,
The world is a rotating wheel.
It is like a Dreidle, a spinning top, where everything goes in cycles. Man becomes angel, and angel becomes man. Head becomes foot, and foot becomes head. Everything goes in cycles, revolving and alternating. All things interchange, one from another and one to another, elevating the low and lowering the high.
All things have one root.
There are transcendental beings such as angels that have no connection with the material. There is the celestial world, whose essence is very subtle. Finally, there is the world below, which is completely physical.
All three come from different realms, but all have the same root.
All Creation is like a rotating wheel, revolving and oscillating. At one time something can be on top like a head, with another on bottom like a foot. Then the situation is reversed. Head becomes foot, and foot becomes head. Man becomes angel, and angel becomes man.
Our sages teach us that angels were cast down from heaven. They entered physical bodies and were subject to all worldly lusts. Other angels were sent on missions to our world and had to clothe themselves in physical bodies. We also find cases where human beings literally became angels.
For the world is like a rotating wheel. It spins like a Dreidle, with all things emanating from one root. (The feet of some are also higher than the heads of others; for in the transcendental worlds, the lowest of an upper world is higher than the highest level of a lower one. However, in truth, everything revolves in cycles.)
This is why we play with a Dreidle on Chanukah.
Chanukah is an aspect of the Holy Temple. The primary concept of the Temple is the revolving wheel. The Temple was in the category of "the superior below and the inferior above." G-d lowered His Presence into the Temple; this is "the superior below." The Temple's pattern was engraved on high; this is "the inferior above."
The Temple is therefore like a Dreidle, a rotating wheel, where everything revolves and is reversed.
translated by Aryeh Kaplan
Only Light that is sought can be found. 