A dreidel is a four-sided top with a Hebrew letter on each side. It is usually made out of clay, wood, or plastic. It is a very popular toy that is played with during the eight days of Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday. Make your own dreidel and play the following game.

Make Your Dreidel

• Print out the Adobe Acrobat PDF format Dreidel on a 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper (use heavy paper or card stock for best result). You can download Adobe Acrobat Reader free.
• Cut out the dreidel along the dotted lines.
  
• Fold at all of the solid lines and place a dab of glue on each numbered flap.
  
• Use your finger to spread the glue along the flaps.
  
• Stick each numbered flap to the back of the flat surface that is next to it when folded (flap #1 to the
  back of the square, flap #2 to the back of the the #5 triangle, flap #3 to the back of the #2 triangle,
  etc.). Flaps #6, #7, and #8 stick to the underside of the top flap.
  
• Allow glued-together dreidel to dry for at least 15 minutes.
  
• Insert a pencil through the perforated hole at the top until the tip of the pencil just touches the point
  at the bottom of the dreidel.
  
• Spin your dreidel!
  

Classroom Activity

This activity is based on the exhibition Jewish Life in the American West: Generation to Generation organized by the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. The exhibition tells the story of the settlement of the West through the eyes of Jewish immigrants who traveled here and set up communities. Learn about the different reasons Jewish people came here, what they did when they got here, and how they created communities throughout the American West.

Play the Jewish Life in the American West Dreidel Game

Instead of a Hebrew letter on each side of the dreidel, there is a historical picture of a person. Each person is Jewish and either came to or was born in the West during the 1800s. All of them did something important for the Western community, by providing work clothing that has become a symbol of America, enriching the Jewish community through education and the arts, contributing to the scientific knowledge of all human beings, or honoring the community through public service.

Rules

• Play the dreidel game with two or more players.
• Only one dreidel is needed to play the game.
• Place twenty-five tokens in the center of the table. Tokens can be anything from buttons to paper clips.
  
• Players take turns spinning the dreidel. When the dreidel stops, a historical person will be facing up. The person who spun the dreidel tells the other players one new fact about the person facing up on the dreidel and takes one token from the center of the table. If a player can’t think of a new fact, he or she cannot take a token and the next player spins the dreidel.
  
• When all tokens are gone from the center of the table, the player with the most tokens is the winner.
  

Gallery Connections

When you visit the exhibit, spin your dreidel and find out more about these Western Jewish settlers.

You can find out a lot of new facts about the Jewish community in the West. In the first room of the exhibition find the oldest artifact. What is this object? Why is it important?

Find the large advertisement for Levi’s. Can you discover more facts about Levi Strauss that you can use to play the dreidel game?

Look for the painting done by Solomon Nuñes Carvalho. What do you remember about him? What new things can you learn about Carvalho by looking at the painting?

There are many exciting new facts about Florence Prag Kahn and her mother in Jewish Life in the American West: Generation to Generation. See if you can come up with two new facts and share them with your friends.

Dr. Albert Michelson is in this exhibition, too! Find his photograph and read more about him.

Is there anything you found while exploring the exhibition today that reminded you of something in your own family, culture, or community? Name two things about your community and the Jewish community that are very similar or very different.

Biography: a written account (description) of someone’s life

Community: a group of people who share the same interests or beliefs and/or who live in the same area

Emigration: the act of leaving one’s home country

Entrepreneur: a person who takes it upon himself or herself to begin or manage a new business

Immigration: the act of entering a new country

Jewish: relating to the customs, traditions, and/or religion of the Jews

Kosher: a term describing food prepared according to Jewish dietary laws

Migration: the act of moving from one area to settle in a different area

Rabbi: a Jewish religious leader and teacher

Solomon Nuñes Carvalho (1815–1897)
Artist and explorer

• Solomon Nuñes Carvalho was a Sephardic Jew born in South Carolina.

• He spent one year in the West as part of a historic expedition led by Colonel John Charles Frémont to survey the route for a railroad across the Rocky Mountains.

• He documented the journey in writings, oil paintings, and daguerreotypes (an early type of photograph) and wrote a book based on his adventure.

• Many people consider him the first photographer to travel to the West.

• After the expedition Carvalho helped create the first Jewish organization in Los Angeles.

Florence Prag Kahn (1866–1948)
Congresswoman and educator

• Florence Prag Kahn was born in 1866 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

• Her family was well established in the West.

• Kahn’s grandfather was one of the first shochets (kosher butchers) in San Francisco.

• Her mother was an educator and helped fight for women’s rights.

• Her father was a merchant who sold supplies to the gold miners and helped organize one of the first synagogues in California.

• Kahn received a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to teach high school English and history.

• Kahn was the first Jewish congresswoman in the United States. She served for twelve years.

• She was very dedicated to Judaism and participated in many Jewish organizations. She traveled throughout California trying to encourage women to become involved in national politics.

Albert Abraham Michelson (1852–1931)
Physicist and Nobel Prize winner

• Dr. Albert Abraham Michelson was born in Strelno, Prussia, and moved to the Western United States when he was four years old.

• He and his family immigrated to Calavares, California.

• When he was in elementary school, his family sent him to San Francisco so he could go to a better school. He joined the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was so good at solving science problems that the Academy accused him of cheating.

• At the age of 26, his first invention measured the speed of light.

• His research helped lay the groundwork for Einstein’s theory of relativity.

• Michelson was also an artist, a musician, and an athlete.

• In 1907, Michelson became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for science.

Levi Strauss (1829–1902)
Developer of Levi blue jeans

• Levi Strauss was born as Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria. He immigrated to the United States to work in his brothers’ dry goods business in New York.

• When news of the California Gold Rush made its way east, Strauss decided to migrate to California to make his fortune by selling supplies to the miners. In 1853 he opened a new branch of the family business in San Francisco.

• In 1872, Strauss and his customer Jacob Davis created work pants with rivets to make them sturdy.

• Levi’s have been sold for 130 years and are still very popular today.

• Levi Strauss actively supported orphanages, charities, and the Jewish community.

Photo credits:
Albert Abraham Michelson. Special Collections and Archives Division, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.
Solomon Nuñes Carvalho. Courtesy of Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati.
Florence Prag Kahn. From the Archives of Western States Jewish History Journal.
Levi Strauss. Founder of Levi Strauss & Co. Courtesy Levi Strauss & Co. Archives, San Francisco.

Explore the history of immigrants to the American West. Try these suggested activities with your class.

1. Investigate the biographies of the four historical figures from the dreidel game. Ask each student to choose the individual they think contributed the most to his or her community. Divide students into groups according to the historical figure chosen and then ask them to decide, as a group, how to convince the rest of the class that their person contributed the most. Photocopy the extended biographies on the back of this brochure for each group.

2. Discuss the different organizations that Western Jewish communities set up to maintain their culture and religion. Ask students to consider these questions: What would you do to maintain your family, community, or cultural traditions if you moved? What things are important to you?

3. Conduct Jewish community research on the Internet using the recommended Web site list. Ask students to find three interesting facts that they didn’t know before about Jewish people by looking at different Web sites. Write all of the interesting facts the class gathered on the blackboard.

4. Have students attend a Jewish holiday celebration at a local temple or Jewish community center and then have them write a newspaper article about the holiday.

5. Many Jewish people who came to the West had a strong impact on their communities. Ask students to consider these questions: If you were coming to a new town, what would you do? How would you make sure that your voice was heard? What are some of the different ways a person or a community can change the place they live in? (Examples: being active in politics, being involved in community organizations, opening businesses, etc.) Discuss with students an important problem in their community today and ask them to explain how they might go about changing it.

6. Have each student research his or her own family’s immigration. Ask them to interview family members to find out how and why their family immigrated to the United States or migrated to Los Angeles. Give students individual blank world maps or a map of the United States, or use a large world map to chart their families’ immigration paths.

7. European Jews who immigrated to the United States had to travel across the ocean to get here. Ask students to pretend that they are going to emigrate to another country, but they can’t take all of their belongings with them. Have students list the top ten items each would take to an unfamiliar place. Then ask students to list ten things that they would leave behind. Discuss why they included certain items on the lists and why they decided to leave certain items off.

8. Conduct a short introduction about how objects are cared for in a museum. Ask students to bring in one family, community, or cultural item that they would take with them if they had to move to a new land. Have students create a short two- or three-sentence description of their object. Divide students into groups of four or five to create mini-museum exhibits using their descriptions as labels. Have students decide what the groups’ objects have in common and then draw a picture or write a label describing each group of objects. When the activity is completed, have the whole class walk around to see all of the exhibits.