Hebrew Alphabet
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40 free Hebrew Alphabet trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, no capitals and, in everyday writing, almost no written vowels. It is one of the oldest scripts still in daily use, and its letters turn up far beyond Hebrew itself: in mathematics, on spinning tops at Hanukkah and even in a famous science-fiction greeting. This quiz shows you a letter and asks for its name, or gives you a sound and asks which letter makes it. It then moves on to the stories behind the shapes: where the script came from, how vowels and numbers are written, what changes at the end of a word, and how scribes still copy sacred scrolls by hand. It is written for Hebrew school students, adult learners, bar and bat mitzvah families and anyone curious about the letters. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the full set can be played online or printed for a classroom.
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Q 01Which Hebrew letter, written ש, inspired the hand shape of Leonard Nimoy's Vulcan salute in Star Trek?
Shin
Shin has three upward strokes, the shape Jewish priests make with their hands during a blessing. Nimoy peeked at the gesture in synagogue as a boy and later adapted it for Spock.
Q 02On a Hanukkah dreidel, which Hebrew letter, written ג, lets the spinner take everything in the pot?
Gimel
Gimel stands for a word meaning 'whole', so the spinner scoops the entire pot. The other three sides mean take half, do nothing, or put a piece in.
Q 03Like Arabic, the Hebrew alphabet is written and read in which direction?
Right to left
Right to left is how every line of Hebrew runs. The script also has no capital letters, so names and sentence openings look like any other word.
Q 04Which Hebrew letter, written א, did mathematician Georg Cantor borrow to name the sizes of infinite sets?
Aleph
Aleph numbers rank infinities by size, beginning with aleph-null for the counting numbers. The letter's own name comes from an old Semitic word for 'ox'.
Q 05The four Hebrew letters on a Hanukkah dreidel are said to stand for which phrase?
A great miracle happened there
A great miracle happened there is the usual reading of the letters, pointing to the Hanukkah oil story. Dreidels made in Israel swap one letter so the phrase ends 'here'.
Q 06Which number, the value of the Hebrew letters spelling chai ('life'), is a favorite multiple for Jewish gifts?
18
18 is what the two letters of chai add up to, 8 plus 10, so a gift of 18, 36 or 54 dollars doubles as a wish for long life.
Q 07Which seafaring people's 22-letter alphabet is the ancestor of both the Hebrew and the Greek alphabets?
Phoenicians
Phoenicians traded across the Mediterranean and their consonant-only script travelled with them. The Greeks then added vowels, something the original never wrote down.
Q 08Which tiny Hebrew letter, written י, lies behind the English word 'jot' by way of the Greek iota?
Yod
Yod's name travelled through Greek and Latin into English. The Gospel of Matthew's 'one jot or one tittle' made it proverbial for the smallest detail.
Q 09Which Hebrew word did Gileadite guards in the Book of Judges use as a password to expose fleeing Ephraimites?
Shibboleth
Shibboleth caught the Ephraimites because their dialect turned its opening 'sh' into 's'. English kept the word for any telltale custom or phrase that marks out a group.
Q 10Which language, built largely on medieval German, is traditionally written in Hebrew letters?
Yiddish
Yiddish borrows the alphabet but, unlike Hebrew, writes out nearly all of its vowels, pressing spare consonant letters into service to do the job.
Q 11Which Hebrew letter, written ב, opens the Torah as the first letter of Bereshit, 'in the beginning'?
Bet
Bet is closed on three sides and open on one. An old midrash reads that shape as a hint to explore what came after creation, not what came before it.
Q 12Which Hebrew letter, written ד, has a name tied to the word for 'door' and a Greek cousin called delta?
Dalet
Dalet sounds much like delet, the modern Hebrew word for 'door'. The same ancient letter also grew into the Latin D.
Q 13Which Hebrew letter, written ח, makes the throaty first sound of challah that English speakers soften to 'h'?
Chet
Chet is a rasp made at the back of the throat, a sound most English speakers find hard to produce. The same ancient letter grew into the Greek eta and the Latin H.
Q 21Which Hebrew letter, written ע, has a name meaning 'eye' and is usually silent in Israeli speech?
Ayin
Ayin began as a circle or oval drawn to look like an eye. That round shape later became the vowel O in the Greek and Latin alphabets.
Q 22Which Hebrew letter, written פ, shares its name with the Hebrew word for 'mouth' and can sound like p or f?
Pe
Pe is thought to have started as a drawing of a mouth. With a dot in its centre it is a crisp p, and without the dot it usually softens to f.
Q 23Which Hebrew letter, written צ, makes a 'ts' sound and is nicknamed after the word for a righteous person?
Tsadi
Tsadi is often called tzadik, a nickname that probably arose when people rattled off the alphabet and ran its name into the next letter's. Its modern sound is the one that ends the English word 'cats'.
Q 14Which Hebrew letter, written ל, appears on a car sign in Israel to show that the driver is a learner?
Lamed
Lamed stands for lomed, 'learner', on the sign. The letter itself is usually traced back to a drawing of an ox-goad, a herdsman's cattle prod.
Q 15Which Hebrew letter, named after water, changes from מ to a closed, boxy ם at the end of a word?
Mem
Mem echoes mayim, the Hebrew word for water. Its shape is believed to go back to the Egyptian hieroglyph for water as well.
Q 16Which Hebrew letter, written ו, is joined to the front of a word to mean 'and'?
Vav
Vav means 'hook', a fitting name for the letter that hooks words and clauses together. Grammar books call this use the vav of connection.
Q 17Which Bible chapter, the longest of all, has 22 eight-verse sections, one for each Hebrew letter?
Psalm 119
Psalm 119 is an acrostic: all eight verses in a section begin with the same letter, working through the alphabet in order. Its 176 verses also make it the longest of the psalms.
Q 18Which Hebrew term names the dots and dashes that show vowels, mainly in poetry and children's books?
Niqqud
Niqqud literally means 'dotting' or 'pointing'. Most everyday Israeli writing leaves it out, so fluent readers work out the vowels from context.
Q 19Which manuscripts, found in caves near Qumran, include a copy of Leviticus in old Paleo-Hebrew letters?
Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea Scrolls are mostly in the square script, but a few Torah texts keep the older letters, which stayed in use for sacred writing down to the 1st century BCE.
Q 20Which Hebrew letter, written ת, is the twenty-second and last letter of the alphabet?
Tav
Tav takes its name from a word meaning 'mark' or 'sign'. In the Book of Ezekiel that same word is the mark set on the foreheads of those to be spared.
Q 24Which Hebrew letter, written ק, has a name that doubles as the Hebrew word for 'monkey'?
Qof
Qof once prompted the suggestion that its shape shows a monkey and its tail. Most Hebrew speakers now pronounce it as a plain k.
Q 25Which Hebrew letter, written ר, has a name linked to rosh, the word for 'head' heard in Rosh Hashanah?
Resh
Resh was handed on to Greek as rho and to Latin as R, which is why all three letters stand for much the same sound.
Q 26Which Hebrew letter, written ז, has a name meaning 'weapon' and a Greek descendant called zeta?
Zayin
Zayin appears to have been named after a sword, and a related Hebrew verb means 'to arm'. It is also the ancestor of the Latin letter Z.
Q 27Which Greek letter descends from the same ancient letter as the Hebrew kaf, whose name means 'palm'?
Kappa
Kappa and the Latin K both grew out of that letter, which is thought to have started life as a drawing of the palm of a hand.
Q 28Which Hebrew term describes the special shape that five letters take when they come at the end of a word?
Sofit
Sofit simply means 'final' or 'ending', and the five shapes are used nowhere else in a word. The older Paleo-Hebrew script had no such forms.
Q 29Which Hebrew practice treats each letter as a number so that a word or name can be read as a total?
Gematria
Gematria takes its name from a Greek word, and the Greeks had a matching practice of their own called isopsephy.
Q 30Which medieval French rabbi lends his name to the semi-cursive Hebrew typeface used for printing commentaries?
Rashi
Rashi never used the script himself: he died several hundred years before it came into use. Early printers set his commentaries in it, and the name stuck.