This article is about the Language. For the people, see Israelites.

Hebrew was once considered a "dead" language, but is now "live" and spoken by approximately 6 million people. It is one of the official languages of Israel and is also used for Jewish prayers. The Torah was originally written in Hebrew. It is written and reads from right to left. The term alphabet comes from "aleph bet", the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The Hebrew word for Hebrew is Ivrit (עברית).

There are several dialects or ways to pronounce Hebrew: Biblical, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, Sanaani, Tiberian, Mizrahi and modern Hebrew. For a more detailed explanation, see Wikipedia's article on the Hebrew language.

The Hebrew AlphabetEdit

The basic Hebrew alphabet consists of the consonants:

Alef	Bet/Vet	Gimel	Dalet	Hey	Vav	Zayin	Het	Tet	Yod	Kaf/Chaf
silent	b/v	g	d	h	v	z	h	t	y	k/kh
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	20
א	ב	ג	ד	ה	ו	ז	ח	ט	י	כ
										ך
Lamed	Mem	Nun	Samekh	Ayin	Pe/Fe	Tsade	Qoph	Resh	Shin/Sin	Tav
30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	200	300	400
ל	מ	נ	ס	ע	פ	צ	ק	ר	ש	ת
	ם	ן			ף	ץ

Table based on Wikipedia: Hebrew alphabet.

The second form that some of the consonents have is for when it is the final letter in a word.

Extra marks around the consonants are used to indicate vowels (mostly for novice readers) and the correct chant (for Torah reading.

The first letters also double as numbers. So, א is 1, ב is 2, etc. י is 10. (See Wikipedia:Hebrew numerals for more.) So, Hebrew words have numeric values. Sometimes these values are taken to be meaningful. For example, the word chi (חי), which means life, is also 18. (See numerology.)

Articles about Hebrew WordsEdit

Since Hebrew was the original language of Judaism many of the key concepts are expressed in Hebrew. This wiki includes articles about some Hebrew words, including

• Ehad
• Shabbat
• Shalom
• Tikkun Olam
• Torah
• Tzedakah

External referencesEdit

• Wikibooks:Hebrew -- Want to learn some Hebrew? Here's a free resource.
• Hebrew language version of Wikipedia