Like
English, Hebrew has an alphabet. In fact, our English word
"alphabet" comes from the names of the first two
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph and Beth. The Hebrew
alphabet was used as the basis for the ancient Greek alphabet,
which in turn became the basis for the alphabet used by the
Romans, and now by most languages in Europe.
Unlike
English, the Hebrew and Yiddish language are written from
right to left. As an example, here is the first verse of Genesis,
written without the vowel signs.
Hebrew words have power:
We tend to take written language for granted. According
to Jewish legend, the Torah (the five books of the Bible)
was written 2000 years before the Universe was created,
and by implication, the letters themselves predated the
Universe. God used the Torah as a blueprint when He created
the universe. The Torah is the utmost truth; since the Torah
is a relatively small book, it is believed that the Torah
contains not just the "obvious" reading, but many,
many different hidden meanings as well.
For
example, in Genesis, it is written that "the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul." Later on in Genesis, "Adam" is referred
to, but nowhere is Adam introduced - it's taken for granted
that the reader understands that "Adam" must be
the man in question. Now, in Hebrew, Adam is written like
this:
This
consists of three letters (right to left): Aleph, Daleth
and Mem.
The word for "blood" in Hebrew is "Dam"
- letter Daleth and letter Mem. LetterAleph by itself not
only represents the "Ah" sound, but also the element
of air, or breath - so "Adam" is seen as blood
with the breath of life - the man created by God.
There are many other such hidden meanings in the Bible -
using letters as numbers, using a "cypher" so
that the last letter of the alphabet corresponds to the
first, the penultimate letter corresponding to the second,
and so on, and hidden abbreviations. Scholars have spent
many years finding meaning in these, and the Talmud is a
body of writing which largely consists of commentaries -
the "hidden meanings" - on the Torah. Even today,
Jewish scholars are researching such hidden meanings. In
recent years, the "Bible Code" has received a
lot of publicity; this is a system where supposed hidden
messages are teased out of the bible by picking, say, every
31st letter in a sequence, or every 42nd letter, to reveal
new words.
Esoterica
Each Hebrew letter corresponds to a number; most Hebrew
bibles actually use the letters to indicate chapter numbers
and verse numbers. This means that every single Hebrew word
has a numeric value, and scholars have long been fascinated
by entirely different words that have the same numeric value
as each other. A simple example: the word for love is Ahebah
(Alef-Heh-Beth-Heh), which adds up to 13. The word for unity
is Achad (Alef-Cheth-Daleth), which also adds up to 13.
Thus there is a correspondence between love and unity. The
art of finding words with the same numeric value is called
gematria - the concept is vaguely similar to numerology
(where a person's name is reduced to a number, to indicate
their personality), except that gematria is usually conducted
on biblical names and the names of angels.
Finally,
Hebrew letters are divided into three categories: three
"mother" letters, which correspond to the three
elements (Air, Water and Fire - Earth is considered to be
a combination of all three elements, and not an element
in its own right), seven "double" letters, which
correspond to the seven planets known to the ancients (Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). Double letters
are so called because they historically had two different
sounds; for example, the letter "Peh" can have
a "P" sound or an "F" or "Ph"
sound; some of these distinctions have now disappeared -
for instance, the letter "Gimel" only has a single
sound now (a hard "G"), but used to have two sounds
("G" or "J"). The remaining twelve letters
correspond to the twelve zodiac signs:
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Hebrew
Letters
Hebrew Vowels
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, the Rabbi realized the need for aids
to pronunciation, so they developed a system of dots
and dashes known as points.
These dots and dashes are written above or below the
letter, in ways that do not alter the spacing of the
line. Text containing these markings is referred to
as "pointed" text. Below is an example of
pointed text. For emphasis, I have drawn the points
in the illustration in blue and somewhat larger than
they would ordinarily be written.
| V'ahavta
l'rayahkhah kamokha.
And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Leviticus (19:18). |
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There
is another style used for handwriting, in much the
same way that cursive is used for the Roman (English)
alphabet.
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.
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