Hebrew Alphabet Chart: All 22 Letters, Their Names, Sounds, and Numbers

The Hebrew alphabet, the alef-bet, has 22 letters. All of them are consonants, they are read from right to left, and five of them take a different shape at the end of a word. That is the whole thing. It looks like a wall the first time you open a siddur, but it is a small, regular system, and plenty of adults learn every letter in a week or two of short daily practice.

This page is a reference to keep open while you read. It has every letter with its name, its sound, the Ashkenazi name you may hear in shul, its number value, and a real word from the siddur or the holidays to practice on. Below the chart are the final forms, the letters that share a sound, and a simple one-week plan.

The short version

• 22 letters, 27 shapes: five letters (kaf, mem, nun, pei, tzadi) have a separate final form.
• Right to left: the first letter of a word is on the right.
• Consonants only: the vowels are small dots and lines added under, above, or inside the letters. They have their own chart.
• A dot can change a letter: bet and vet, kaf and chaf, pei and fei are the same letter with or without a dot inside.
• Every letter is also a number: alef is 1, bet is 2, and so on up to tav, which is 400.

The Hebrew alphabet chart

The letters are listed in alphabetical order, alef first. Where a letter has two sounds, both shapes are shown: the one with the dot inside (called a dagesh) first. The "also called" column lists the spellings you will see in other books, including the Ashkenazi names many shuls and Hebrew schools use.

The example words carry vowel marks, the way a siddur prints them. If you have not learned the vowels yet, just look at the first letter of each word and match it to its row. The vowels come next, and our Hebrew vowels chart covers every mark.

The five final letters

Five letters change shape when they are the last letter of a word. Four of them grow a long tail that drops below the line. Final mem closes up into a square. The sound does not change, only the shape.

The Talmud (Shabbat 104a) groups these five letters under the memory word מנצפ״ך, which people usually say as "mantzepach". In a siddur, final kaf almost always has a vowel mark tucked inside it, a shva or a kamatz, which can look odd the first time you see it in מֶלֶךְ or לְךָ.

Letters that sound the same

In modern Israeli Hebrew several pairs of letters make the same sound. Older pronunciations kept them apart, and some communities still do, but for reading purposes you can treat them as twins:

• Silent: א alef and ע ayin. Both just carry the vowel under them.
• v: ב vet and ו vav.
• ch: ח chet and כ chaf.
• k: כּ kaf and ק kuf.
• t: ט tet and תּ tav.
• s: ס samech and שׂ sin.

This is good news when you read, because you only have to learn one sound for each pair. It only matters when you write, where you need to know which letter the word actually uses.

Ashkenazi or Israeli names and sounds?

You will hear the same letter called by two names. Israeli Hebrew says bet, tet, and tav. Traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew, which many shuls and day schools use, says beis, tes, and sof. The letters on the page are identical.

The one sound difference that matters for reading is tav. Without a dot inside, Israeli and Sephardi readers say it as t, and Ashkenazi readers say it as s. That is the whole reason one person says "Shabbat" and another says "Shabbos" about שַׁבָּת. Neither is wrong. If you pray in a shul, follow the way people around you read. If you learn alone, pick one and stay with it.

Letters are numbers too

Hebrew has no separate digits in traditional writing, so each letter has a number value. Alef through tet count 1 to 9, yud through tzadi count by tens from 10 to 90, and kuf through tav count by hundreds from 100 to 400. This system is called gematria, and you see it all the time:

• Hebrew years. The current year, 5787, is written תשפ״ז: 400 + 300 + 80 + 7, with the thousands left off. You can see it on our Jewish holidays 2026-2027 calendar.
• Chai. חַי, life, is chet (8) plus yud (10), which is why gifts in multiples of 18 are a tradition.
• 15 and 16. They are written ט״ו (9 + 6) and ט״ז(9 + 7) instead of the obvious spelling, because the obvious one would spell part of God's name. That is the "Tu" in Tu Bishvat and Tu B'Av.
• Page and chapter numbers in a siddur or Chumash are often printed in Hebrew letters.

Some charts give the final letters values from 500 to 900. That is a later convention. In the standard system the final forms count the same as their regular letters.

Learn the alphabet in a week, ten minutes a day

Trying to learn 27 shapes in one sitting is how people give up. Small daily sessions work better, because the skill is recognition, and recognition comes from seeing the same shapes again and again. One way to split it:

• Day 1: א ב ג ד ה
• Day 2: ו ז ח ט י
• Day 3: כ ל מ נ ס
• Day 4: ע פ צ ק ר
• Day 5: ש ת plus the dot pairs: בּ ב, כּ כ, פּ פ, שׁ שׂ
• Day 6: the five finals ך ם ן ף ץ
• Day 7: review, then find letters you know in a real text, like the first line of the Shema, שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל.

Each day, start with two minutes on yesterday's letters before you add new ones. Say the name and the sound out loud. Write each letter a few times if you can, since your hand remembers shapes your eyes skip over. If a day slips, just pick up where you stopped.

The letters beginners mix up most are bet and kaf, dalet and resh, hei and chet, vav and zayin, and samech and final mem. Our guide to learning to read Hebrew as an adult has a section on exactly those pairs, plus a four-week plan that takes you from letters to reading full lines.

Print, script, and Rashi letters

The letters in this chart are block print, the form used in every siddur, Chumash, and Torah scroll. Israelis write by hand in a cursive script that looks quite different, and many commentaries in a Chumash are printed in a third style called Rashi script. For reading prayers you only need block print. You can pick up cursive later if you want to write.

Tools that help

A printed chart and ten minutes a day really are enough. If you like drilling on your phone, our best apps to learn Hebrew comparison covers the free and paid options honestly, including which ones teach the siddur's vowels and which focus on modern conversation. And once you can sound out letters, a siddur with clear print helps a lot. See the best siddurim for beginners.

Bayit is a small Daily Plan for Jewish life: the weekly parsha one aliyah a day, Tanakh in Hebrew and English side by side, a little tefilah, and your Shabbos times. A few minutes with real Hebrew text every day is how the letters stop being shapes and start being words. Get Bayit on the App Store.