- Craft
- Twenty-sided die dreidels
David Zvi "DZ" Kalman studies what happens when Jewish life meets technology. His University of Pennsylvania dissertation, "Unequal Hours," traced how Jews took up timekeeping technology from the Bible to the twentieth century. He is a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, and the owner of Print-O-Craft Press, an independent Jewish publisher.
In November 2019, while living in Lower Merion outside Philadelphia, he launched Dreidel20: a twenty-sided die with each of the four dreidel letters (nun, gimel, hei and shin) printed five times. That makes it statistically identical to a regular dreidel, only tossed instead of spun, which is easier for kids and for anyone whose tops keep wobbling out. Ritualwell started with an order of 20 packs, sold out, and went on to sell more than 700. Kalman later patented the shape.
Anyone who owns a bag of polyhedral dice will get the joke. ModernTribe carries Dreidel20 in sets of six, plus the boxed Dreidel4+20, which hides a traditional four-sided spinner inside each die.
Good to know
- PatentedU.S. design patent USD943676
- Created byDZ Kalman, PhD (Penn), Senior Research Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute
- Covered byPittsburgh Jewish Chronicle; Ritualwell
