Alef Quest

The Hebrew alphabet in five scripts

From the Ktav Ivri of the First Temple, through the Imperial Aramaic of the Persian exile and the Samaritan branch, to the square Ashurit of every Sefer Torah and the Rashi script of the printed page. Play the Alef Quest above to learn all of them, letter by letter.

Three thousand years of letters

1. c. 1850 to 1100 BCE: Before the letters settled. The ox head of alef, turned over by the Greeks, is the capital A in every Latin alphabet today.
2. c. 1100 to 900 BCE: Twenty-two letters, right to left. Eicha sets chapters 2, 3 and 4 with the pe verse before the ayin verse, and the Gemara explains why: the spies put their mouth (peh) before their eyes (ayin) (Sanhedrin 104b). Practice alphabets from the days of the Shoftim show the same order.
3. c. 900 to 700 BCE: A Hebrew hand of its own. The Tel Dan Stele, found in 1993, holds the oldest known mention of the House of David outside Tanach.
4. c. 700 to 500 BCE: Seals of the last kings. In 2015 a clay seal impression the size of a fingernail turned up on the Ophel in Yerushalayim: “Belonging to Chizkiyahu son of Achaz, king of Yehudah.”
5. c. 500 to 300 BCE: Exile, return and the Aramaic pen. Chazal place the great change here. Mar Zutra: in Ezra’s day the Torah was given again in Ktav Ashurit, the script that “came up with them from Ashur.” Rebbi holds the Torah was given in Ashurit from the start (Sanhedrin 21b to 22a).
6. c. 300 to 100 BCE: The Jewish hand is born. A Kohen Gadol struck his title in the old letters: “Yehochanan the Kohen Gadol and the council of the Jews.”
7. c. 100 BCE to 100 CE: The Herodian hand and the Churban. Josephus describes a Kohen standing at the corner of the Temple to sound the trumpet at the start and end of Shabbat. The stone marking his post survived the Churban.
8. c. 100 to 300 CE: After the Churban: one script. In 2016 scientists read the charred Ein Gedi scroll without unrolling it. Its letters and section breaks match our Masoretic text exactly.
9. c. 300 to 500 CE: The age of the Talmud. Both Talmuds were learned from texts without a single vowel sign.
10. c. 500 to 700 CE: Signs for the vowels. The letters themselves are never touched. Vowels are placed around them, so the consonants stay exactly as they were.
11. c. 700 to 900 CE: The Masoretes of Teveria. The Masoretes counted letters, words and verses, so a copyist could check a whole sefer against their tallies.
12. c. 900 to 1100 CE: The great codices. Two centuries later the Rambam relied on Keter Aram Tzova for the layout of the Sefer Torah (Hilchot Sefer Torah 8:4).
13. c. 1100 to 1300 CE: Rambam, Tosafot and the regional hands. Pages written by the Rambam himself, drafts and letters in his own hand, survive among the Genizah fragments.
14. c. 1300 to 1500 CE: Gold leaf and the first presses. In the Bird’s Head Haggadah the Jews are drawn with the heads of birds.
15. c. 1500 to 1700 CE: Print, Tzfat and the STaM traditions. Open any Gemara: the page number you cite was set by Daniel Bomberg in Venice five hundred years ago.
16. c. 1700 to 1900 CE: The rules written down. The Chatam Sofer wrote that he would let scribes practice only after they had been tested on Keset HaSofer.
17. c. 1900 CE to today: Type, screens and scanners. The Sefer Torah on the bimah today is still written letter by letter, on parchment, in ink, in Ashurit, exactly as Yadayim 4:5 requires.