The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The system was adapted from that of the Greek numerals in the late 2nd century BCE. The current numeral system is also known as the Hebrew alphabetic numerals to contrast with earlier systems of writing numerals used in classical antiquity. These systems were inherited from usage in the Aramaic and Phoenician scripts, attested from c. 800 BC in the so-called Samaria ostraca and sometimes known as Hebrew-Aramaic numerals, ultimately derived from the Egyptian Hieratic numerals. The Greek system was adopted in Hellenistic Judaism and had been in use in Greece since about the 5th century BC. In this system, there is no notation for zero, and the numeric values for individual letters are added together. Each unit is assigned a separate letter, each tens a separate letter, and the first four hundreds a separate letter. The later hundreds are represented by the sum of two or three letters representing the first four hundreds. To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999, the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. Gematria uses these transformations extensively. In Israel today, the decimal system of Arabic numerals is used in almost all cases. The Hebrew numerals are used only in special cases, such as when using the Hebrew calendar, or numbering a list, much as Roman numerals are used in the West.
Numbers
The Hebrew language has names for common numbers that range from zero to one million. Letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used to represent numbers in a few traditional contexts, for example in calendars. In other situations Arabic numerals are used. Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun, the feminine form is used. For ordinal numbers greater than ten the cardinal is used and numbers above the value 20 have no gender. , with Hebrew numerals in counterclockwise order.
Ordinal values
Note: For ordinal numbers greater than 10, cardinal numbers are used instead.
Cardinal values
Note: For numbers greater than 20, gender does not apply. Officially, numbers greater than a million were represented by the long scale; However, since January 21, 2013, the modified short scale, which was already the colloquial standard, became official.
Speaking and writing
Cardinal and ordinal numbers must agree in gender with the noun they are describing. If there is no such noun, the feminine form is used. Ordinal numbers must also agree in number and definite status like other adjectives. The cardinal number precedes the noun, except for the number one which succeeds it. The number two is special: shnayim and shtayim become shney and shtey when followed by the noun they count. For ordinal numbers greater than ten the cardinal is used.
Calculations
The Hebrew numeric system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total. For example, 177 is represented as which corresponds to 100 + 70 + 7 = 177. Mathematically, this type of system requires 27 letters. In practice the last letter, tav is used in combination with itself and/or other letters from qof onwards, to generate numbers from 500 and above. Alternatively, the 22-letter Hebrew numeral set is sometimes extended to 27 by using 5 sofit forms of the Hebrew letters.
Key exceptions
By convention, the numbers 15 and 16 are represented as and , respectively, in order to refrain from using the two-letter combinations and , which are alternate written forms for the Name of God in everyday writing. In the calendar, this manifests every full moon, since all Hebrew months start on a new moon. Combinations which would spell out words with negative connotations are sometimes avoided by switching the order of the letters. For instance, 744 which should be written as might instead be written as or .
The Hebrew numeral system has sometimes been extended to include the five final letter forms— for 500, for 600, for 700, for 800, for 900—which are then used to indicate the numbers from 500 to 900. The ordinary additive forms for 500 to 900 are,,, and.
Gershayim
are inserted before the last letter to indicate that the sequence of letters represents a number rather than a word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by two or more Hebrew numerals. Similarly, a single geresh is appended after a single letter to indicate that the letter represents a number rather than a word. This is used in the case where a number is represented by a single Hebrew numeral. Note that geresh and gershayim merely indicate "not a word." Context usually determines whether they indicate a number or something else. An alternative method found in old manuscripts and still found on modern-day tombstones is to put a dot above each letter of the number.
Decimals
In print, Arabic numerals are employed in Modern Hebrew for most purposes. Hebrew numerals are used nowadays primarily for writing the days and years of the Hebrew calendar; for references to traditional Jewish texts ; for bulleted or numbered lists ; and in numerology.
Thousands and date formats
Thousands are counted separately, and the thousands count precedes the rest of the number. There are no special marks to signify that the “count” is starting over with thousands, which can theoretically lead to ambiguity, although a single quote mark is sometimes used after the letter. When specifying years of the Hebrew calendar in the present millennium, writers usually omit the thousands, but if they do not this is accepted to mean 5,000, with no ambiguity. The current Israeli coinage includes the thousands.
Date examples
“Monday, 15 Adar 5764” : “Thursday, 3 Nisan 5767” : To see how today's date in the Hebrew calendar is written, see, for example, .
The Abjad numerals are equivalent to the Hebrew numerals up to 400. The Greek numerals differ from the Hebrew ones from 90 upwards because in the Greek alphabet there is no equivalent for tsade.
