Built with help from a local contractor, the top stands 25 feet tall and actually spins!
After two weeks of sawing, hammering, painting and puttering, the children of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hebrew Academy Community School in Margate, Fla., stepped back to enjoy the towering sight of the world’s largest dreidel.
Measuring a little more than 25 feet in height, the gigantic wooden structure was made to resemble the dreidel, a spinning top traditionally played with during the long cozy evenings of Chanukah.
The giant dreidel is built on a core of metal tubing, surrounded by framing and plywood boards, carefully painted by the students. The entire school body, tots to teens, took part in the effort, resulting in a light-blue masterpiece of collaboration.
The resulting masterpiece actually does spin, although not freely as an authentic spinning top.
Emblazoned with the Hebrew letters nun, gimmel, hey and shin on its four sides, the top is a reminder that “a great miracle happened there [in Israel],” during the events that led up to the declaration of the Chanukah holiday more than 2,000 years ago.
According to Rabbi Shloime Denburg, the school’s director of development, the dreidel was the brainchild of Ira Bernstein, a local contractor and supporter of the school, who enlisted the help of Home Depot and Coastal Painting to help sponsor the project. “The dreidel is an especially appropriate symbol for school children,” explains Denburg, “as that was the toy said to have been used in ancient Israel by children to hide the fact that they were studying Torah.”
In the early 1970s, the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—introduced a Chanukah awareness campaign, urging increased private and public display and observance of the eight-day holiday. In particular, he stressed the innate connection between Chanukah and education, highlighting how the Hebrew word for education, chinuch, shares the same roots as the holiday’s name.
He encouraged children to get involved in every aspect of Chanukah celebration, at home in the form of lighting their own Chanukah menorahs, gathering together with their family to receive Chanukah gelt (gifts of money) and playing dreidel, as well as publicizing the message and meaning of the holiday in the streets.
The Hebrew Academy children’s giant dreidel is a fusion of these themes. The school, founded 34 years ago at the Rebbe’s instruction, has grown from an enrollment of four to serving 375 Jewish children from the extended surrounding area. Denburg says the school’s mission is to ensure that every Jewish child receives a top-quality, joy-filled Jewish education regardless of affiliation or financial ability.
As the dreidel was unveiled, the level of excitement was so high that even a drenching winter downpour couldn’t dampen the spirits of the children as they sang and danced under the shadow of the hulking structure they erected in their school parking lot.
Joined by local elected officials and members of the media, they celebrated their accomplishment and the joy of sharing their Chanukah pride with their community.
