Read a handwritten Hebrew letter
Hebrew family letters were written in regional cursive hands, including Yemenite and Ashkenazi scripts. Take a photo of the manuscript. FamilyLore transcribes the Hebrew characters, provides an English translation, and marks words it is uncertain of.
Choose Yiddish: it reads the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew-language letters included. Your first three pages need no account and no card.
A Hebrew letter from our shelf, as FamilyLore read it
A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.
Salem b. Musa to his wife and children · 20 Av 5637 (1877)
- בע"ה
- ה"ל [?] הילד הנעים והנחמד ילד שעשועים הנחמד והטוב גם ה' יתן לו הטוב ונוהו [?]
- יהטוב [?] לטוב והחמוד לבי רחוק מעיני וקרוב ללבי בתנומות עלי משכב ובקיצין [?]
- האדון ן' כמוהר"ר [...] נר"ו יש"ל והאדון חביב הנעימים ילדי שעשועים יוסף נ"י
- והאדון חביב [...] יצ"ו [?] ובת הנשמה רחל נ"ה ונות הבית כגפן פוריה שרה
- כולם ידרוש ה' לטובה בכלל עם בני ישראל אכי"ר אחר דש"ה הנזכרים הודעה
- מאביך [?] ידיד נפשך מו"ה [...] ן' כמוהר"ר משה נר"ו והאדון חביב לאחיך יפת
How well it reads, measured
| Script | Pages | Characters read correctly | Names, dates and numbers right | Misread words it marked | Last run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew and Yiddish6 pages · 3 Nov 2026 | 6 | 34%Characters read correctly | 15%Names, dates and numbers right | 100%Misread words it marked | 3 Nov 2026 |
Not measured yet. How well FamilyLore reads
Questions
- Can’t ChatGPT do this?
- A general chatbot can read some Hebrew cursive handwriting, sometimes well, but it usually hands you clean text with no sign of which words it guessed, and its makers publish no figures for this script; FamilyLore marks the words it is unsure of and publishes how often it reads correctly, in the table above.
- What if it reads a word wrong?
- Tap a word to see the other readings FamilyLore weighed, and correct it if you know better. The translation is redone from your correction. Most misread words carry a mark, but not every one, so a name or a date that matters is worth checking against the photo.
- Which styles of Hebrew cursive does FamilyLore handle?
- FamilyLore focuses on cursive and semi-cursive historical hands used in correspondence, including Yemenite and Ashkenazi scripts.
- Who sees my pages?
- Only you. A page becomes public only if you share it, and then only to people who have the link. Deleting your account deletes the photos you uploaded.
What FamilyLore doesn’t read well yet
- Hebrew and Yiddish pages: you can upload them, but the benchmark hasn’t measured them yet.
- Micrography, Kabbalistic diagrams, and heavily decorated scribal borders.
- Judeo-Arabic and Ladino manuscripts with rare phonetic diacritics.
From photo to text in three steps
Take a photo of the page
Lay the sheet flat, in daylight and without flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.
Upload it
“Yiddish” is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era.
Read it
You get the page as it was written, in modern spelling, and in English. Correct a word you know better yourself.
Rather read it yourself?