Hebrew Alphabet
Level: Basic |
The Hebrew and Yiddish languages use a different
alphabet than English. The picture below illustrates the Hebrew alphabet,
in Hebrew alphabetical order. Note that Hebrew is written from right to left,
rather than left to right as in English, so Alef is the first letter of the
Hebrew alphabet and Tav is the last. The Hebrew alphabet is often called
the "alefbet," because of its first two letters.
If this sounds like Greek to you, you're not far off! Many letters in the
Greek alphabet have similar names and occur in the same order (though they
don't look anything alike!): Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta ... Zeta ... Theta,
Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu ... Pi ... Rho, Sigma Tau.
The "Kh" and the "Ch" are pronounced as in German or Scottish, a throat clearing
noise, not as the "ch" in "chair."
Note that there are two versions of some letters. Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pei and
Tzadei all are written differently when they appear at the end of a word
than when they appear in the beginning or middle of the word. The version
used at the end of a word is referred to as Final Kaf, Final Mem, etc. The
version of the letter on the left is the final version. In all cases except
Final Mem, the final version has a long tail.
Like most early Semitic alphabetic writing systems, the alefbet has no vowels.
People who are fluent in the language do not need vowels to read Hebrew,
and most things written in Hebrew in Israel
are written without vowels.
However, as Hebrew literacy declined, particularly after the Romans expelled
the Jews from Israel, the rabbis recognized
the need for aids to pronunciation, so they developed a system of dots and
dashes called nikkud (points). These dots and dashes are written above, below
or inside the letter, in ways that do not alter the spacing of the line.
Text containing these markings is referred to as "pointed" text.
| Most nikkud are used to indicate vowels. The table at right illustrates
the vowel points, along with their pronunciations. Pronunciations are
approximate; I have heard quite a bit of variation in vowel pronunciation.
Vowel points are shown in blue. The letter Alef, shown in red, is used to
illustrate the position of the points relative to the consonants. The letters
shown in purple are technically consonants and would appear in unpointed
texts, but they function as vowels in this context. |
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There are a few other nikkud, illustrated and explained below.
The dot that appears in the center of some letters is called a dagesh. It
can appear in just about any letter in Hebrew. With most letters, the dagesh
does not significantly affect pronunciation of the letter; it simply marks
a split between syllables, where the letter is pronounced both at the end
of the first syllable and the beginning of the second. With the letters Beit,
Kaf and Pei, however, the dagesh indicates that the letter should be pronounced
with its hard sound (b, k, p) rather than its soft sound (v, kh, f). See
the table above. In Ashkenazic pronunciation
(the pronunciation used by many Orthodox Jews
and by many older Jews), Tav also has a soft sound, and is pronounced as
an "s" when it does not have a dagesh.
Vav, usually a consonant pronounced as a "v," is sometimes a vowel pronounced
"oo" (u) or "oh" (o). When it is pronounced "oo" as in "food", pointed texts
have a dagesh. When it is pronounced "oh" as in "Oh!," pointed texts have
a dot on top.
Shin is pronounced "sh" when it has a dot over the right branch and "s" when
it has a dot over the left branch.
 At right is an example of pointed text. Nikkud
are shown in blue. This line would be pronounced (in
Sephardic pronunciation, which is what most
people use today): V'ahavtah l'reyahkhah kamokhah. (And you shall love your
neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19:18).
The style of writing illustrated above is the one most commonly seen in Hebrew
books. It is referred to as block print, square script or sometimes Assyrian
script.
For sacred documents, such as torah scrolls
or the scrolls inside tefillin and
mezuzot, there is a special writing style
with "crowns" (crows-foot-like marks coming up from the upper points) on
many of the letters. This style of writing is known as STA"M, an acronym
for "Sifrei Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzot," which is where you will see that
style of writing. For more information about the STA"M alphabet, including
illustrations and relevant rules, see
Hebrew Alphabet used in writing
STA"M.
| There is another style used for handwriting, in much the same way that
cursive is used for the Roman (English) alphabet. This modern script style
is illustrated at right. |
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Another style is used in certain texts to distinguish the body of the
text from commentary upon the text. This style is known as Rashi Script,
in honor of Rashi, the greatest commentator
on the Torah and the
Talmud. Rashi himself did not use this script;
it is only named in his honor. The alefbet at left is an example of Rashi
Script. |
As mentioned above, the Hebrew alphabet that we use today is referred to
as Assyrian Script (in Hebrew, K'tav Ashuri). But there was once another
way of writing the alphabet that the rabbis
called K'tav Ivri, which means "Hebrew Script." Many examples of this ancient
way of writing the Hebrew alphabet has been found by archaeologists: on coins
and other artifacts. It is quite similar to the ancient Phoenician writing.
An example of this script is seen at
Scripts of
the Hebrew Language, side-by-side with other styles of Hebrew writing
that were discussed above.
The rabbis of the Talmudic period were well
aware of this ancient K'tav Ivri, and they raised the question whether the
Torah was originally given in K'tav Ivri or
K'tav Ashuri. A variety of opinions are expressed in the Talmud at Sanhedrin
21c-22a: one opinion states that the Torah was originally given in K'tav
Ivri, but was changed to K'tav Ashuri in the days of Ezra, after the Babylonian
Exile (the Babylonians, and consequently the Jews in exile, used K'tav Ashuri).
Another opinion says that the Torah was written in K'tav Ashuri, but that
holy script was denied the people when they sinned and was replaced with
another one; when the people repented, the K'tav Ashuri was restored. A third
opinion states that the Torah was always in K'tav Ashuri.
The general consensus is that the Torah was given in K'tav Ashuri, because
the Talmud makes other references that don't make sense in K'tav Ivri. The
Talmud talks about final forms of letters in the original Torah, but K'tav
Ivri doesn't have final forms. It talks about the center of the Samekh and
the Final Mem miraculously floating when the Ten
Commandments were carved all the way through the tablets, but there is
no Final Mem in K'tav Ivri, and neither Samekh nor Mem would have a floating
center in K'tav Ivri as they do in K'tav Ashuri.
All authorities maintain that today, the only holy script is K'tav Ashuri.
Any torah scrolls,
tefillin or
mezuzot must be written in K'tav Ashuri, and
specifically in a style of K'tav Ashuri known as STA"M, discussed
above.
K'tav Ivri is understood to be in the nature of a font, like Rashi script,
rather than in the nature of a different alphabet, like Greek, Cyrillic or
Roman. The names of the letters, the order of the letters, and the
numerical value of the letters are apparently the
same in both K'tav Ashuri and K'tav Ivri; thus, any religious significance
that would be found in the numerical value of words or the sequence of the
alphabet is the same in both scripts.
The process of writing Hebrew words in the Roman (English) alphabet is known
as transliteration. Transliteration is more an art than a science, and opinions
on the correct way to transliterate words vary widely. This is why the Jewish
festival of lights (in Hebrew,
Cheit-Nun-Kaf-Hei) is spelled Chanukah, Chanukkah, Hanuka, and many other
interesting ways. Each spelling has a legitimate phonetic and orthographic
basis; none is right or wrong.
 Each letter in the alefbet has a numerical value. These values
can be used as numerals, as the Romans used some of their letters (I, V,
X, L, C, D, M) as numerals. The table at right shows each letter with its
corresponding numerical value. Note that final letters have the same value
as their non-final counterparts.
The numerical value of a word is determined by adding up the values of each
letter. The order of the letters is irrelevant to their value: the number
11 could be written as Yod-Alef, Alef-Yod, Hei-Vav, Dalet-Dalet-Gimel or
many other ways. Ordinarily, however, numbers are written with the fewest
possible letters and with the largest numeral first (that is, to the right).
The number 11 would be written Yod-Alef (with the Yod on the right, because
Hebrew is written right-to-left), the number 12 would be Yod-Beit, the number
21 would be Kaf-Alef, the number 611 would be Tav-Reish-Yod-Alef, etc. The
only significant exception to this pattern is the numbers 15 and 16, which
if rendered as 10+5 or 10+6 would be a name of G-d,
so they are normally written Teit-Vav (9+6) and Teit-Zayin (9+7).
Because of this system of assigning numerical values to letters, every word
has a numerical value. For example, the word Torah (Tav-Vav-Reish-Hei) has
the numerical value 611 (400+6+200+5). There is an entire discipline of
Jewish mysticism known as Gematria that
is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numerical values of words. For
example, the number 18 is very significant, because it is the numerical value
of the word Chai, meaning life. Donations to Jewish charities are routinely
made in denominations of 18 for that reason.
Some have suggested that the final forms of the letters Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pei
and Tzadei have the numerical values of 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900, providing
a numerical system that could easily render numbers up to 1000. However,
there does not appear to be any basis for that interpretation in Jewish
tradition. A cursory glance at a Jewish tombstone will show that these letters
are not normally used that way: the year 5766 (2005-2006) is written
Tav-Shin-Samekh-Vav (400+300+60+6; the 5000 is assumed), not Final Nun-Samekh-Vav
(700+60+6). Indeed, writing it in that way would look absurd to anyone familiar
with Hebrew, because a final letter should never appear at the beginning
of a word! But even where numerology is used only to determine the numerical
values of words, you will not find examples in Jewish tradition of final
letters being given different values. For example, in traditional sources,
the numerical value of a name of G-d that ends in Final Mem is 86, not 646.
I have received several e-mails pointing out that the numerical value of
Vav (often transliterated as W) is 6, and therefore WWW has the numerical
value of 666! It's an amusing notion, but Hebrew numbers just don't work
that way. In Hebrew numerals, the position of the letter/digit is irrelevant;
the letters are simply added up to determine the value. To say that Vav-Vav-Vav
is six hundred and sixty-six would be like saying that the Roman numeral
III is one hundred and eleven. The numerical value of Vav-Vav-Vav in Hebrew
would be 6+6+6=18, so WWW is equivalent to life! (It is also worth noting
that the significance of the number 666 is a part of Christian numerology,
and has no basis that I know of in Jewish thought).
And while we're on the subject of bad numbers, it is worth noting that the
number 13 is not a bad number in Jewish tradition or numerology. Normally
written as Yod-Gimel, 13 is the numerical value of the word ahava (love,
Alef-Hei-Beit-Hei) and of echad (one, as in the daily prayer declaration,
G-d is One!, Alef-Cheit-Dalet). Thirteen is the
age of responsibility, when a boy becomes bar
mitzvah. We call upon G-d's mercy by reciting his Thirteen Attributes
of Mercy, found in Exodus 34:6-7. Rambam summed
up Jewish beliefs in Thirteen Principles.
Many fonts included in Windows now have a built-in Hebrew character set.
There are Hebrew versions of Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma and so forth.
You can see these using the Character Map tool. Persuading your computer
to type these characters, however, can be a bit of a trick!
If your web browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or higher, you
should be able to automatically download fonts for viewing Hebrew on the
web. Again, using these fonts to type Hebrew is a bit of a trick! If you
want to download these fonts or see if these fonts are already downloaded,
Click Here to open a page that displays examples
of Microsoft Internet Explorer's Hebrew fonts. If you do not already have
Hebrew web fonts installed, your browser will give you an opportunity to
download them from Microsoft.
This page also includes a JavaScript tool that
will help you type Hebrew, if you have installed Microsoft Internet Explorer's
Hebrew support. The results of that script can be copied and pasted into
the Windows XP version of WordPad, and may also work with other non-Hebrew
word processors. Feel free to download that page by right-clicking the link
and choosing Save Target As...
If you have AOL, you can download Hebrew fonts for Windows. Just go to Keyword:
Download and search for Hebrew Fonts.
If you are serious about writing a significant amount of text in Hebrew,
you will need a proper Hebrew word processor. An excellent Hebrew word processor
is
DavkaWriter,
available from Davka Software. DavkaWriter
comes with many attractive Hebrew fonts including both consonants and vowels
that will map to your keyboard in an intuitive phonetic way or in the standard
Israeli keyboard format. It is very easy to switch between Hebrew and English
within a document. DavkaWriter even comes with little stickers to put on
the keys of your keyboard so you can learn their keyboard mappings, and an
onscreen display shows you their keyboard mappings. Davka also has a lot
of fonts available, as well as a lot of other Hebrew and Judaic software.
© Copyright 5756-5766 (1995-2006), Tracey
R Rich
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