This style of writing is known as STA'M (an abbreviation for 'Sifrei Torah, Tefillin and Mezuzot,' which is where you will encounter that style of writing: There is another style used for handwriting, in much the same way that cursive is used for the Roman (English) alphabet.įor 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 called tagin) on many of the letters. It is referred to as block print or sometimes Assyrian text. Samples are given below:Ĭommonly seen in Hebrew books and newspapers. For sacred writings such as the Torah scroll, a type of calligraphy is used. Modern Hebrew uses square script for printed materials (such as books, newspapers, road signs, etc.) and cursive script for handwriting. When you read a Hebrew book, you open the rightmost page and flip pages until you get to the leftmost page (just the opposite of an English book). Hebrew is written and read from right to left, rather than left to right as in English. Today, vowel marks are used to facilitate learning the language: Hebrew is normally written without vowel letters (though four letters: 'Aleph,' 'Hey,' 'Vav,' and 'Yod' are also used as vowels in modern Hebrew today). There are 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with five letters having additional ' final forms' when they appear at the end of a word. If you are entirely new to the study of Hebrew, the following information will acquaint you with some of the basic features of this fascinating language.

Is old hebrew read right to left