Guys used to have illegal religious services under the Romans. If the Romans came by to check on such a gathering, they would whip out a dredyl and be gambling.
Malthus
December 11, 2015, 2:42pm
42
Heh, haven’t heard that one before - but apparently it’s an actual tradition, at least according to Wikipedia!
At this point, a tradition arose that the game was developed by cave-dwelling Jews who studied the Torah in seclusion as they hid from the Seleucids under Antiochus IV. At the first sign of Seleucids approaching, their Torah scrolls would be concealed and be replaced by dreidels.
A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, (/ˈdreɪdəl/ DRAY-dəl; Yiddish: דרײדל, romanized: dreydl, plural: dreydlech;[a] Hebrew: סביבון, romanized: sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in Europe and Latin America.
Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet:
.mw-parser-output .script-hebrew,.mw-parser-output .script-Hebr{font-family:"Ezra SIL SR","Ezra SIL","SBL Hebre...
Only, replace Romans with Macedonians.
Mind you, it’s totally unhistorical.
