Dreidle (1920)

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Mon Jun 24 19:22:09 UTC 2002


"I feel like a spinning top or a dreidel.  The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle.  You can't slow down."
--Don McLean, "Dreidel"
(the album after "American Pie")

   OED has 1934 for "dreidel."  Merriam-Webster has 1926.  I had posted something a day or two ago that was very much like "dreidel."
   THE YOUNG JUDAEAN here in the NYPL's Jewish division has a few months missing in 1918 and 1919.  The publication became in 1912 or 1913.
   From THE YOUNG JUDAEAN, November-December 1920, pg. 86, col. 1:

   Little David was an expert _dreidle_ player and he felt sure that he could win his brothers' money from them. (...)
   Z-z-z-z ... round and round went the _dreidle_.
(...)(Col. 2--ed.)
   Whiz...round went the _dreidle_.  The _dreidle_ was evidently telling wonderful secrets in a mysterious language.  Oh, how that _dreidle_ hated to fall and give up its precious secret, but since the creation  of the world it is preordained that _driedlach_ must fall, and finally the _dreidle_ understood, that it was far more comfortable to lie on your back than to run on one leg.

(WHERE ARE MY 1920 "LATKES"???--ed.)



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