Hey (ה) means you take half of the pot. If the pot has an odd number of pieces, most people round up, so with 7 pieces you'd take 4. Hey stands for Haya, Hebrew for "happened."
Hey in the game
Hey is the solid, respectable spin. You don't get everything, but you get half, and half of a good pot is still a good night.
What about odd numbers?
This is the most common dreidel argument. The two options:
- Round up. Pot of 7, you take 4. This is the most common way and it's what our online game does.
- Round down. Pot of 7, you take 3.
Neither is wrong. Decide before you start. If you're playing with kids, round up. It feels better.
One edge case: if there's a single piece in the pot and you round up, you take it. Now the pot is empty, so everyone adds a piece, just like after a Gimel.
What Hey stands for
Hey is the first letter of היה, Haya, meaning "was" or "happened." It's the third word of Nes Gadol Haya Sham, "A great miracle happened there."
In Yiddish, Hey lines up with halb, "half." The German version of the game used H for Halb. Same meaning.
You'll see the name spelled Hey, Hei, Heh, He and Hay. They're all the same letter.
How to recognize Hey
Hey looks like a doorway. There's a flat roof, a full leg on the right, and a shorter leg on the left that doesn't quite touch the roof. That little gap in the top left corner is the giveaway.
It's the only letter on a dreidel with two legs, so once you know it, you'll never miss it.
Fun facts about Hey
- Hey is the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
- Its number value is 5.
- Written with an apostrophe (ה׳), Hey is a common shorthand for Hashem, "the Name," a way of referring to God.
Updated October 2026