---
title: "How Hebrew Is Pronounced"
category: "other"
description: "Why an Israeli says Shabbat and an Orthodox Jew in New York says Shabbos: the Israeli, Ashkenazi, Yemenite and academic pronunciations of Hebrew, the one this site uses, and how the name of God is read."
tags: ["lang/hebrew", "pronunciation", "learning"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Exodus 3:15"
bible_references: ["Exodus 3:15", "Isaiah 45:23", "Philippians 2:9-11"]
date_created: 2026-10-17
date_modified: 2026-10-18
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---

# How Hebrew is pronounced

**In one sentence:** Jewish communities scattered across the world kept reading the same Hebrew
letters for two thousand years but drifted apart in how they sounded them, so this site picks one
pronunciation, modern Israeli, and this page tells you what the others sound like when you hear
them.

Listen to an Israeli and to an Orthodox Jew from New York greet each other on a Friday evening. One
says *Shabbat shalom*, the other *Gut Shabbos*. They are reading the same word,
<span dir="rtl">שַׁבָּת</span>, with the same letters and the same vowel points. The difference is
which community taught them to read.

## This site's standard: Israeli

Every pronunciation on this site, in the studies, on the [alphabet](https://the-way.lewy.au/hebrew/alphabet/) page and on the
word cards, is **modern Israeli Hebrew**. Three reasons:

- It is the Hebrew spoken in Israel today, so it is what you will hear from
  native speakers, in recordings, and in most courses.
- Israeli pronunciation was built on the Sephardi reading tradition, and like the Masoretic accents
  it stresses most words on the last syllable.
- One standard means a word sounds the same in every study you read here.

## The four you will meet

| Tradition | Who uses it | What it sounds like |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Israeli** | Israel; most Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox synagogues and schools in America; most Christian courses | Five plain vowels; stress usually on the last syllable; several old consonant pairs merged |
| **Ashkenazi** | Jews of Central and Eastern European descent, especially Haredi and many Orthodox communities in America and Britain, above all in prayer | ת without the dot said as *s*; qamats said as *o*; holam often as *oy* or *ey*; stress usually on the second-to-last syllable |
| **Yemenite** | Jews of Yemen and their descendants in Israel | Keeps sounds the others lost: the throat letters ח and ע, *w* for ו, and the soft forms of all six *begadkephat* letters |
| **Academic** | Seminaries, lexicons and commentaries | A reconstruction of the Masoretes' own (Tiberian) reading: *w* for ו, *th* for ת without the dot, and transliteration marks like ḥ, ṭ and ʿ |

How a particular American community reads varies. A Reform temple and a Hasidic *shtiebel* a mile
apart can sound like two languages. Israeli pronunciation spread through American Jewish schools in
the decades after 1948, and Ashkenazi pronunciation remains strong in prayer among the Orthodox.

## Hearing the difference

The same words, as each tradition says them:

| Hebrew | Meaning | Israeli | Ashkenazi | What changed |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| <span dir="rtl">שַׁבָּת</span> | Sabbath | *sha-BAT* | *SHA-bos* | ת without the dot → *s*; stress moves earlier |
| <span dir="rtl">סֻכּוֹת</span> | Booths (the feast) | *su-KOT* | *SUK-kos* | the same two changes |
| <span dir="rtl">בָּרוּךְ</span> | blessed | *ba-RUKH* | *BO-rukh* | qamats → *o* |
| <span dir="rtl">מֹשֶׁה</span> | Moses | *mo-SHE* | *MOY-she* | holam → *oy* |
| <span dir="rtl">בְּרֵאשִׁית</span> | in the beginning | *be-re-SHIT* | *be-REY-shis* | tsere → *ey*; ת → *s* |
| <span dir="rtl">טַלִּית</span> | prayer shawl | *ta-LIT* | *TAL-is* | ת → *s* |

So when you read *Bereishis*, *Sukkos* or *Boruch* in a Jewish book, you are reading the Ashkenazi
form of a word this site writes *Bereshit*, *Sukkot* or *Baruch*. Neither is a mistake.

## The name of God

One word is pronounced the same way in every one of these traditions: it is not pronounced.

> ✝️ Exodus 3:15 (ESV)
>
> 15 God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel: 'The LORD, the God of your
> fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This
> is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

"The LORD" here, in small capitals, is God's personal name, <span dir="rtl">יהוה</span>, four
letters (*yod he vav he*) that scholars write YHWH. By the time of Jesus, Jews reading Scripture
aloud said *Adonai*, "Lord", in its place, out of reverence. The Masoretes kept the four letters
as written and put the vowels of *Adonai* under them, <span dir="rtl">יְהוָה</span>, as a reminder
to the reader of what to say. That is why:

- **In a synagogue** you will hear *Adonai* wherever the text has the name, and outside prayer many
  Jews say *HaShem*, "the Name".
- **English Bibles** print "the LORD" in small capitals for it, following the same practice.
- **Where the name follows *Adonai*** (*Adonai YHWH*, as in Genesis 15:2), the Masoretes gave the
  name the vowels of *Elohim*, <span dir="rtl">אֲדֹנָי יֱהוִה</span>, so the reader says *Adonai
  Elohim* and avoids saying "Lord" twice. English Bibles print "Lord GOD" there.
- **"Jehovah"** arose when Christian readers in the late Middle Ages read the consonants and the
  reminder vowels together, as if they made one word.
- **"Yahweh"**, the form the studies on this site use, is the scholarly reconstruction of the
  original pronunciation. It rests on ancient Greek transcriptions and the short form *Yah*
  (<span dir="rtl">יָהּ</span>, as in *hallelu-yah*). Its exact vowels and stress are not certain,
  so this site gives the spelling and no stressed respelling.

The word cards print the name as the Hebrew Bible does and mark it "read *Adonai*".

### How we know when

The custom is older than the earliest statement of it. In date order:

- **The Great Isaiah Scroll** from Qumran (1QIsaᵃ), copied in the second century BC, treats the
  name and *Adonai* as interchangeable. Where the Masoretic text has *Adonai*, the scroll sometimes
  has the name (Isaiah 6:11; 7:14), and where the Masoretic text has the name, it once has *Adonai*
  (Isaiah 3:17). A scribe who said *Adonai* for both would slip this way. That is the likeliest
  explanation, but it is an inference from the copying. Some Qumran scribes also wrote the name in
  the old letters ([Three Scripts](https://the-way.lewy.au/hebrew/three-scripts/)).
- **Josephus**, writing around AD 93, says God told Moses "his holy name, which had never been
  discovered to men before; concerning which it is not lawful for me to say any more" (*Antiquities*
  2.276, Whiston).
- **The Mishnah**, written down around AD 200, remembers the Temple: "In the Temple the name was
  uttered as it is written, but in the province in its substituted name" (Sotah 7:6, trans. Joshua
  Kulp, CC BY).
- **The Talmud** names the substitute. God's name "that is written with the letters yod and heh is
  read as Adonai", and in the world to come it will be read as it is written (Pesachim 50a, William
  Davidson Edition, CC BY-NC), the day when "the LORD will be one and his name one" (Zechariah
  14:9, ESV).

So "by the time of Jesus" is the statement the sources support, and the Isaiah scroll suggests the
custom is older still.

What the Jewish readers did with the name, the apostles did with Jesus. The Greek Old Testament put
*Kyrios*, "Lord", where the Hebrew has the name. In Isaiah 45:23 the LORD swears by Himself, "To
me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance" (ESV), and Paul applies that oath to
the Son:

> ✝️ Philippians 2:9-11 (ESV)
>
> 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10
> so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11
> and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

God has not hidden His name from you. He gave it to Moses to be remembered forever, and He has
given it to His Son Jesus, so that when you call on Jesus as Lord you are calling on the God who
said "I AM" at the burning bush.

## Where next

- [The Names of God](https://the-way.lewy.au/god/names-of-god/): what the name means, and the other names God gave
  Himself.
- [The Hebrew Alphabet](https://the-way.lewy.au/hebrew/alphabet/): every letter and vowel with its Israeli sound.
- [The Names of God: Word Cards](https://the-way.lewy.au/hebrew/names-of-god-cards/): the names, printed as A4 flashcards with
  their pronunciation.