By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Millions have been printed, and they have been seen on envelopes around the world this Hanukkah season, but now word has come out that the beautiful dreidel on that stamp resides, with several other dreidels, in Bellingham.
Rabbi Lennard Thal and his wife Linda have been collecting artistic dreidels for several years, and some of their collection has been displayed in a coffee table book called The Art of Hanukkah, compiled by a close friend at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.
When the U.S. Postal Service decided to change the design of this years Hanukkah stamp, they apparently saw the book and managed to contact us, since our names are mentioned as the source of the dreidels in the photograph, wrote Rabbi Thal in an e-mail from Jerusalem.
The one they chose was designed by a Russian émigré who lives in Israel. Israeli dreidels, of course, have a different letter a pey instead of a shin, the difference being that A great miracle happened here there, and there here and it was that pey that the Postal Services photographers originally depicted.
I called them and said that this might cause massive confusion on the part of many American Jewish stamp users who were unfamiliar with the difference, wrote Thal, who said that they asked us to send the dreidel back for a second sitting, so to speak!
Though the Thals dont currently have grandchildren, he wrote that when the time eventually comes, they might get a kick out of hearing about the travels of Bubbes and Zaydehs dreidel!