Hanukkah an Opportunity to Address Pitfalls of Gambling

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) At a time when gambling has become increasingly popular, with poker matches online and on television, some in the Jewish community say Hanukkah can be an opportunity to address the addictive dangers of wagering. Among the festivities associated with the eight-day holiday is the children’s game of dreidel, a […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) At a time when gambling has become increasingly popular, with poker matches online and on television, some in the Jewish community say Hanukkah can be an opportunity to address the addictive dangers of wagering.

Among the festivities associated with the eight-day holiday is the children’s game of dreidel, a penny-betting game involving a spinning top.


While no one claims dreidel creates gambling addicts, the game can become a discussion starter for children to look at the deeper issues, and pitfalls, of higher stakes gambling.

Dreidel is “not something that’s going to drive the gambling problem or stop the gambling problem,” said Jerry Zeitchik, a clinical psychologist who directs guidance at the Ramaz Upper School, an Orthodox Jewish day school in New York City.

However, “in the current cultural climate where there are kids that get really excited about gambling,” parents can view dreidel playing during the holiday as “an opportunity to take a look at what’s going on in the community,” said Zeitchik.

Honesty is what is lacking on the general subject of gambling in the Jewish community, said Rabbi Abraham Twerski, founder of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh.

“There’s a tremendous amount of denial,” said Twerski, referring to the problem of gambling in the Jewish community. Twerski said he has written a yet-to-be-published book on the subject tentatively titled “It’s More Than Dreidel.”

Twerski said he wrote the book because of his unique position as a Hasidic rabbi, psychiatrist and authority on addiction.

“Dreidel does not lead to compulsive gambling any more than kiddush leads to compulsive alcoholism,” said Twerski, referring to the ceremonial blessing over wine. Still, he said, a compulsive gambler should not play dreidel.


Twerski said gambling addicts run the gamut from kids to retirees.

But the recent craze, especially around poker, has particularly affected tech-savvy youth, who access the games on the Internet and their handheld devices, said Arnie Wexler, who with his wife educates groups about compulsive gambling.

One-third of the cases he handles through his hot line involve people under the age of 25. That number has more than tripled in the last two years, said Wexler, adding that he works with many Jewish clients.

“Most of it is the poker epidemic,” he said. Kids “don’t go out and play baseball anymore. They sit in the house and play poker,” he said, telling stories of youth who steal or deceive their parents to continue placing bets online.

With so many culturally accepted forms of gambling today, “I don’t think there’s any kid out there” who will say, “Great it’s Hanukkah; now we can gamble with the dreidel,” said Zeitchik. It’s “much more fun to play Texas Hold ’em,” he said, referring to a popular poker game.

At his own school, there is fertile ground for gambling as increasing numbers of students are playing cards, he said. “I assume that if more kids are recreationally playing cards, more kids are gambling because, let’s be honest, that lends itself to gambling.”

To view the dreidel game as promoting gambling is a distortion, Zeitchik said. The dreidel game is an “educational trick” to engage children in the holiday, like hiding the matzah for children to find for a reward during the lengthy Passover meal, Zeitchik said.


The Hebrew letters of the dreidel are an acrostic for a Hebrew phrase _ “A Great Miracle Happened There” _ to tell children of the Hanukkah story in which a small Jewish army successfully fought off the Syrians and reclaimed their ancient temple. In trying to light the temple, they found a small bit of oil that should have lasted only one day, but instead lasted for eight; hence, the eight days of Hanukkah.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

However, Hanukkah historically was a time sanctioned for gambling, according to Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, associate professor of Talmud and rabbinics at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary.

In the medieval period, communities tried to control gambling by limiting the times it was permissible, Diamond said. Hanukkah was one of those times that allowed for the activity with the dreidel game or card playing, he said.

“One of the ways in which holidays are sometimes used, and this is true in every religion, is to indulge oneself in ways one is not allowed to the rest of the year,” he said.

Other Jewish holidays like Purim and Simchat Torah go further, explicitly encouraging drinking, for example.

Since gambling has become more popular and in some cases problematic in this country, he said “the challenge of Hanukkah is to talk about it and to educate people in a way that doesn’t allow the dreidel game to become a justification in people’s minds for gambling.”


The best response is to include correctives like supervision or financial limits, said Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a pluralistic think tank.

“Obesity is a problem among American Jews. Should we ban corned beef?” he asked.

“If a culture has a certain problem it behooves them if they want to keep saying yes, to ask: What are the limits?” In Hirschfield’s home, that means before playing the dreidel game, setting aside money for charity to care for those who cannot play.

When confronted with a human impulse, “You can worship it, deny it or sanctify it. It seems to me that gambling in the context of dreidel is an attempt to sanctify the impulse to play games of chance,” he said.

MO/JL END RNS

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