Every year for Chanukah, our family would get together at my grandparents' house on Major Street in Montreal and Grandma would make latkes and the grandkids would gather round and play dreidel with Zaidie at the kitchen table.
One of the great things about playing dreidel with Zaidie was that, instead of us having to ante up our own money, he fronted us the coins for our kitties. First he brought up his stash of change from downstairs, and LOOK-AT-HOW-MUCH-CHANGE-ZAIDIE-HAS-HE-MUST-BE-THE-BEST-PINOCHLE-PLAYER-EVER! We would get giddy looking at his piles of coins-nickels, dimes, of course pennies and even quarters! Change on a plate, change in plastic bags, change from a drawer, coins, coins, coins. (But I would almost guarantee you that Zaidie knew exactly how much change he had.) As we played, while the grandkids put a penny into the middle, Zaidie put in bigger amounts. He would start with at least a dime, and then while we kids took turns spinning the dreidel, Zaidie would put in a bit more, and a bit more, just to make the pot grow.
The best part about playing dreidel with Zaidie is that he always read the dreidel to see what we won. "Gimmel" meant, obviously, you got the whole pot. A hey, well, that's half, not so bad, and the silver coins always went into your half. If you got a shin, sometimes Zaidie would say, "I don't think you gave it a good spin, try again." If it landed on shin again, you put in a penny. But then Zaidie would refill your stash with a few coins from his kitty, so you were net way positive on the whole transaction! If it landed on "nun," and you hadn't won in a turn or two, Zaidie would look down at the dreidel and say, "Yup, looks like a gimmel," and you won the whole pot. Sometimes, we grandchildren would figure out when someone "deserved" to win and we would volunteer that a "nun" looked like a "gimmel" and that child won the pot. No one ever lost playing with Zaidie. That was the point of dreidel. So we played, while Grandma fried up the latkes that we ate as soon as they slid off the frying pan onto the oil-soaked paper towel-covered plate.
At the end of the game, no matter how much change we had, Zaidie always asked us to sell the change back to him. He said he needed it for his card games. So he would buy HIS change back from us for ten dollars! Which was a HUGE amount in those days.
Looking back, I think of Chanukah as not just a time where the grandkids became close to each other and to Zaidie, but also a time where we learned wonderful life lessons. Through our Zaidie's example, we learned to be generous to others. We learned how to share and how to enjoy others' good fortune as we watched our cousins' and siblings' win at their turn spinning the dreidel. And we knew that their good fortune did not diminish our own, because even if someone won the pot right before you, Zaidie made sure it was filled for your turn. We learned that when playing games, sometimes its more important to slightly bend the rules and let everybody win rather than have one winner and many losers. Most importantly, we got to spend time with our Zaidie and Grandma, our aunts and uncles, and our cousins.
I know that as I light candles, while the Morris and Dyna Dalfen family is spread out across Montreal, Ontario, New York, Washington D.C., and Israel (and sometimes Florida, depending on the season), I think back to those dreidel games�and those awesome latkes by Grandma.
