After the Lights: Der Nokhdreydl

There is a moment in the Jewish calendar that is rarely named.

Hanukkah has ended, the small lights have done their patient work, the dreydl has spun and fallen, the miracle has withdrawn without spectacle – and yet time does not rest. Something keeps turning. Not celebration anymore, not mourning yet. A movement without resolution.

In Yiddish, one can name this moment. I called it der nokhdreydl/דער נאכדריידל – the after-dreydl. Not the toy of childhood, but the motion that persists when meaning wobbles and does not quite settle.

Here is the poem as it came to me, written in Yiddish as I always do, without reconstruction or revivalist intent, but as a language still capable of thinking the days we are living through.

The poem appears in six parts in Yiddish and English:

דער נאָכדרײַדל

ס׳דרײט זיך שױן אום־אַרוּם,
װען אַ דרײדל שװינדעלט זיך אַביסל אַװעק
און דער סביבון שפּילט אַ נײַע פֿאַנטאַזיע
אין װאוּ־מעגלעכע הײַנטצײַטיקע סביבות.

ס׳רעדט זיך פֿון סודותדיקע מעשות,
דער שאַרבן פֿילט זיך פֿון העלער הױט
אין דער היץ פֿון קשיאות קשות,
לױטערע גרױפּן־קאַשעס —
און ס׳האַקט, האַקט, ס׳קלאָפּט, ס׳שלאָגט
טיך, גרוּבװײַז, פּראָסט.

אַ באַװוּסטזיניקער פּלאָנטערדיקער תוהו־ובֿוהו
מוּטשעט די שביט־סביבה,
שפּילט מיט פֿאַלש־גורלדיקע װערפֿלעך —
נוּ, װאָס אַ דרײדל טוּט
װען זאת חנוכה איז געאײנדיקט?

אין דער סביבה מיט אינטעליגענטע פּאַרשױנען
שטײט אין מיטן דערינען… אַ ניטלבױם.

A compact rendering in English, staying close to the breath rather than the line:

It is already turning all around, when a dreydl begins to wobble slightly off course, and the sevivon plays a new fantasy within today’s possible surroundings. There is talk of secret tales; the skull fills with too much brightness, in the heat of hardened questions, nothing but tangled riddles. It hacks and knocks and strikes, thickly, roughly, plainly. A conscious, entangled chaos presses on the orbiting space, plays with falsely fated dice. So what does a dreydl do when Hanukkah has ended? In a setting of intelligent people, there stands, right in the middle… a Nitl tree.

Yiddish allows this hesitation without embarrassment. It does not rush to explain. It circles, like the dreydl itself, aware that what follows light is often not darkness but pressure, not silence but friction.

The appearance of the Nitl tree/ניטלבוים [Nitlboym] in the poem is not polemical. Nitl/ניטל is the old Yiddish name for Christmas, derived from natalis, birth, but shaped by lived experience in Europe – a night of excess light, of exposure, sometimes of danger. The tree in the poem is heavy, tall, unmoving. It does not spin. It stands.

דער ניטלבױם איז אַ ביסל שטאָלץ,
שװער, טעמפּ און אומגעלוּמפֿערט, הױך,
און דער ריזיקער טאַנצט ניט אַרום.
דער ניטלבױם איז געװײנטלעך ניט משוטל געװאָרן
צו אַנטפּלעקן די מעשות פֿון דער קבלה.

The Nitl tree is somewhat proud, heavy, dense, ungainly, tall; the giant does not dance. It was not planted to unveil the hidden matters of mystical interpretation.

The contrast is deliberate. The dreydl is also wood – but wood that moves, that is submitted to movement and has to refuse fixation. Jewish memory knows wood well: cedars for the Temple, the tree prepared for Haman, the gallows that mark reversal rather than redemption. Hanging (תּלִיָּה) in Jewish tradition exposes and ends power. It does not sanctify it. And צֶלֶם /tzelem-tseyl’m does not first mean idol, but form, Gestalt – the danger of a shape that claims total meaning. Subsequently, in Yiddish, the word means “a cross” : whatsoever, צלמען זיך /tzeylem’n zikh is “to make the sign of the cross”.

The poem refuses to let wood harden into destiny.

פֿון די װעלדער, פֿון די אַרזים אין לבנון,
די הױכע שטאַרקע בײַמער געבן געהילץ
צו שאַפֿן דרײדלעך, שטײַפֿע געטאָװלען.
די אַרזים האָבן געשטאַלט דעם בית אין ירושלים;
אַלע בלײַבן שטוּם
װען די מענטשן שטרײַטן באַװיר.

From the forests, from the cedars of Lebanon, tall strong trees give wood to fashion dreydls and rigid boards. The cedars shaped the House in Jerusalem; all remain silent when human beings quarrel fiercely.

Wood builds. Wood waits. It does not decide for us.

The dreydl continues to move through destinies and miscalculations, through games that suddenly resemble judgment.

דער דרײדל שפּילט זיך
צװישן גורלות, לפֿעמים כּישופֿים…
שאַכמאַט — דער קעניק, דער מלך, איז בײַצײַטנס געטױט
אָן אַ קול, שנעל.

“The dreydl plays by itself between destinies, sometimes enchantments… checkmate — the king is brought down in time, silently, swiftly.”

And yet the poem does not stop at conflicts. It moves forward into a strange, compressed time – the days after Hanukkah, when celebration has passed but catastrophe has not yet arrived.

שױן האָט מען געטאַנצט־געטאַנצט
מיט ליכטעלעך און יישר־כוח,
אַז אַ בױם בענקענט זיך
צװישן געבוירעניש
און
די געהאַרגענטע קינדער פֿון בית־לחם –
טרױמער פֿון איבערלעבן,
פּדיון און גאולה

“Already they have danced and danced with little lights and words of gratitude, while a tree longs between birth and the slaughtered children of Bethlehem – dreamers of survival,
redemption, and deliverance.”

This stanza cannot be bypassed, nor can it be explained away. It touches the place where Jewish and Christian memories do not reconcile, yet remain entangled. The Nativity, in Christian tradition, is a moment of light and promise; the Massacre of the Innocents (Catholic tradition) named the Slaughter of the 14,000 Martyr Infants killed by Herod in Bethlehem (Byzantine tradition), recalled in the same Gospel narrative (Matthew 2: 16, see Jeremiah 31:14[15]), exposes the cost at which such light enters history. By placing a “tree that longs” between birth and slaughter, the poem does not judge either tradition. It names a shared human fracture: that redemption is dreamt of precisely where children are killed – that salvation is imagined under the shadow of violence. This is not theology, and it is not polemic. It is a sober acknowledgment that light, once it enters history, is never innocent again.

This is where 10 Tevet enters, almost without being named. Unlike other fast days, it marks not destruction but the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. The walls still stand. The pressure has begun. Meaning tightens.

די חומות פֿון טבת שפּילן ניט בלינד…
ער רוּפֿט געװעריק — קול קורא.

The walls of Tevet do not play blindly… a voice calls out insistently, a calling voice.

This is not illumination. It summons.

Yiddish is often treated as memory, sometimes as revival, often as American heritage. But in Israel, it still functions as a borderland language, one that speaks precisely when Hebrew confidence feels premature and English explanations too smooth. It names the in-between days, the after-moments, the times of siege before collapse.

I do not write in Yiddish to recover the past. I write in it because certain moments in Israeli time – moments after light, before judgment – still require a language that knows how to wobble, to circle, to resist final form.

The dreydl has fallen.
The nokhdreydl keeps turning.

And sometimes, that is where thoughts still keep us alive.