Right to left: alef, bet, gimel, dalet and he

Biblical Hebrew is written and read from right to left. A line starts at the right margin, and a printed Hebrew Bible opens from what an English reader would call the back cover. The alphabet has 22 letters, and all of them are consonants. There are no capital letters. This course uses the square script of printed Hebrew Bibles, the same script used for Hebrew today.

Begin with א (alef), ב (bet), ג (gimel), ד (dalet) and ה (he). Alef has no sound of its own in the reading pronunciation taught here; it holds a vowel. Bet sounds b when it has a dot inside and v without it. Gimel and dalet sound g and d. He sounds h, though at the end of a word it is usually silent.

The small marks under, inside and above the letters are vowel points and other reading signs, called niqqud. The Masoretes, scribes who worked roughly between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, added them to the much older consonantal text to preserve its traditional reading. Writing lessons 6 to 9 teach the marks one by one. For now, read the words with the audio and notice that the consonants give each word its outline.

Watch each stroke model, trace it, then write it with the outline hidden. Keep the tops of the letters on one line and their bases on another. Write each word on paper from right to left: start at the right edge of the space. A photo of your paper shows the finished letters, but it cannot show which way your pen moved.