LC Hebrew Studies cheat sheet

Hebrew reads right-to-left; the five final forms (kaf ך, mem ם, nun ן, pe פ→ף, tsadi צ→ץ) appear only at word end.

Modern Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes; niqqud (vowel points) marks vowels in vocalized text but is absent from everyday writing, so context resolves ambiguity.

Stress is usually word-final (milra) but some nouns and verbs are penultimate (mil'el), e.g. ˈbayit 'house', ˈdelet 'door'.

Definite article הַ- (ha-) prefixes the noun; the adjective also takes it: ha-bayit ha-gadol = 'the big house'.

The direct-object marker אֶת (et) precedes a definite direct object only; indefinite objects take no marker.

Spoken Hebrew uses the present tense of 'to be' rarely; nominal sentences like ani student ('I am a student') are standard.

Numbers 3-10 govern nouns in the plural; from 11 up the noun is singular: shlosha yeladim 'three children' vs. ahad asar yeled 'eleven children'.

Hebrew verbs are built from 3- (rarely 4-) consonant roots placed in binyanim: pa'al, nif'al, pi'el, pu'al, hitpa'el, hif'il, huf'al.

Pa'al, pi'el, and hif'il are active; nif'al, pu'al, and huf'al are passive; hitpa'el is usually reflexive or reciprocal.

A root's meaning shifts across binyanim: katav 'wrote' (pa'al), hikhtiv 'dictated' (hif'il), hitkatvut 'correspondence' (hitpa'el noun).

Hebrew has no true present tense: the benoni (present participle) inflects for gender and number (kotev/kotevet/kotvim/kotvot).

Past and future inflect for person, gender, and number; past 3rd-person singular masculine is the citation form.

Nouns and adjectives agree in gender (masculine/feminine), number (singular/plural/dual), and definiteness.

Construct state links two nouns: bayit (absolute) → beit ha-sefer 'the school' (construct beit).

Prepositions take pronominal suffixes: li 'to me', lekha 'to you (m)', la 'to her', lanu 'to us'.

Modern Hebrew literature begins with Haskalah (Enlightenment) writers such as Mendele Mocher Sefarim and Ahad Ha'am.

Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) is the national poet; 'Be-Ir ha-Harega' responds to the 1903 Kishinev pogrom.

S.Y. Agnon won the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature; works include 'Tmol Shilshom' ('Only Yesterday') and 'Ore'ah Nata Lalun'.

Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, and David Grossman are central contemporary novelists; Oz's 'Sipur al Ahava ve-Hoshekh' is 'A Tale of Love and Darkness'.

Yehuda Amichai modernized Hebrew poetry by using colloquial language and biblical allusion in ironic, personal frames.

The Hebrew Bible is divided into Torah (Pentateuch), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings) - Tanakh.

Modern Hebrew revival is credited mainly to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), lexicographer and language activist.

Three pilgrimage festivals (shalosh regalim): Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Weeks), Sukkot (Booths).

High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement); the ten days between are the Ten Days of Repentance.

Shabbat runs from Friday sunset to Saturday nightfall; melakhah (creative work) is prohibited, and havdalah marks its end.

Kashrut: mammals must chew cud and have split hooves; fish must have fins and scales; meat and dairy are not cooked or eaten together.

The Talmud has two layers: Mishnah (c. 200 CE, edited by Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi) and Gemara (commentary, Palestinian and Babylonian).

Major Jewish history milestones: destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE), Second Temple (70 CE), and the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel.

Maimonides (Rambam, 1135-1204) wrote the 'Mishneh Torah' and the philosophical 'Guide of the Perplexed'.

Hebrew verbs encode binyan, tense/aspect, person, gender, and number; translate the full bundle, not just the root meaning.

The vav-consecutive (vav ha-hipukh) flips aspect in biblical narrative: imperfect + vav becomes past, perfect + vav becomes future.

Hebrew construct chains reverse in English: 'shir ha-shirim' = 'Song of Songs', literally 'song of the songs'.

Definite direct-object marker et is untranslated; omitting it in English is correct but must be recognized in parsing.

Idioms rarely translate literally: 'ma nishma' means 'how are you', not 'what is heard'.

Identify the root first (usually three consonants), then the binyan, then person/gender/number to parse an unfamiliar verb.

Poetic parallelism (mashal) in biblical verse pairs lines of similar meaning; compare parallel terms for semantic range.

Modern Hebrew has 5 vowels but only 22 letters; speakers disambiguate homographs from context and stress, not niqqud.

The uvular/velar resh (ר) and the guttural het (ח) and khaf (כ/ך) are common pronunciation pitfalls for learners.

Stress placement changes meaning: 'SHava' ('equal, f) vs. 'shaVA' ('returned, f'); mark stress in transcription.

Spoken register drops the conjunction vav's vowel: u- before labials and shva, ve- elsewhere (u-va-bayit, ve-ha-bayit).

Question intonation rises at the end; the interrogative he- (הֲ-) is written but often unstressed in speech.

In an oral exam, paraphrase the Hebrew text in Hebrew first, then translate; demonstrate comprehension before grammar commentary.

Register matters: biblical quotation (lashon ha-Mikra) vs. rabbinic (lashon Hakhamim) vs. modern (ivrit meduberet).