Appendix:Hebrew numbers

For most purposes, modern Hebrew texts use exactly the same numeral notation as English ones: the Hindu-Arabic system, with the digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, and with the most significant digit being on the left:

איך מגיעים לכביש 17? ― 'eikh magi'ím likh'vísh 17? ― How do you get to Highway 17?

יש 12,345 תלמידים. ― yesh 12,345 talmidím. ― There are 12,345 students.

As in English, such numbers are normally read out as words, with long strings of digits (such as phone numbers) being read out one digit at a time.

But for a number of purposes, as well as in older texts, a system based on the Hebrew alphabet is used, with each letter being assigned a numeric value:

For numbers under one thousand, numbers are expressed using a combination of these letters, in order from highest to lowest; for example, 123 = 100 + 20 + 3 = ק ‎ ﬩ כ ‎ ﬩ ג is written as קכ״ג. There is a special case in order to avoid writing anything similar to a divine name: in numbers ending in 15 and 16, these digits are represented as ט״ו ‎(9+6) and ט״ז ‎(9+7), respectively. Gersháyim are often added between the last two letters if there is more than one letter, or when there is only one letter, a géresh is often placed after it. This is usually done to clarify that it is not a word, and so when the context is clear they are often omitted.

This system is frequently used in giving the day of the week; for example, news articles frequently include phrases such as הבוקר (א׳), meaning “this morning (Sunday)”.

Such numbers are read in a number of different ways, depending on the context; they are sometimes read out letter-by-letter, sometimes as ordinal numbers, sometimes as words (for example, ל״ג may be pronounced lag), and sometimes as cardinal numbers.