History of Hebrew cursive

The brief inscriptions painted in red ink on the walls of the catacombs of Venosa are probably the oldest examples of a cursive Hebrew script.^[1] Longer texts in a cursive alphabet survive on clay bowls found in Babylonia, inscribed with spells against evil spirits.^[2] These bowls date from the 7th or 8th century.^[3]

Set side by side, the cursives of different countries and centuries show the regional differences already visible in the square letters far more plainly.^[4] The Sephardi hand grew rounder still.^[5] The Ashkenazi hand, by contrast, looks cramped and disjointed.^[6] In the cursive of the manuscript codices, the little ornaments at the tops of certain letters gave way to a weak flourish of the line.^[7] Otherwise that book cursive stayed fairly close to the square letters.^[8]

Private documents, such as letters, were certainly written in a much more running hand.^[9] Few early examples survive, because nobody thought such letters worth keeping.^[10] As a result, the development of the script is very hard to follow.^[11]

The Ashkenazi cursive had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century.^[12] It was preceded by a Sephardi cursive called Solitreo.^[13] Historically, Solitreo was the standard handwriting of Judeo-Spanish in the Balkans and Turkey.^[14] It uses far more ligatures, letters joined into one sign, than the modern Hebrew hand.^[15]

The Rashi typeface, used for commentaries, is based on Sephardic semi-cursive handwriting of the 15th century.^[16] A corresponding but distinct semi-cursive type, called mashket or vaybertaytsh, was used for printing Yiddish.^[17] Books printed in it were often meant for women readers.^[18]

A comparison table of the hand's history takes one of its late Ashkenazi columns from a manuscript of Elias Levita.^[19] By the turn of the 20th century, Ashkenazi cursive wrote alef as two separate elements.^[20] Lamed gradually lost its curve.^[21] By the turn of the 20th century it had become a simple stroke.^[22] The modern hand has given it back.^[23] Several letters, among them dalet, het, resh and tav, changed little beyond being rounded and losing their heads.^[24]

Today Modern Hebrew is handwritten in the same Ashkenazi cursive.^[25] It is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish.^[26] Yiddish uses the Hebrew letters as a full alphabet, with letters for its vowels.^[27] Words of Hebrew and Aramaic origin, however, normally keep the traditional spelling of their source language.^[28] Both kinds of spelling can appear in a single word.^[29]

Ways of writing Yiddish still vary today.^[30] The first government reform came in the Soviet Union in 1920.^[31] Under it, Hebrew words were respelled as Yiddish speakers pronounced them.^[32] A further Soviet reform, developed in 1928 and finalized in 1932, abolished the five special word-final letter forms.^[33]

Start with direction: Hebrew is written from right to left.^[34] The alphabet has 22 letters.^[35] Five of them take a different form at the end of a word.^[36] The alphabet began as consonants only.^[37] Later, certain consonants were also used to show vowels.^[38] Expect each writer to differ: cursive Hebrew shows considerable individual variation.^[39] Check dalet against resh, since in fast writing dalet easily came to look like resh.^[40]

Dates need the most care. Hebrew numerals are used today mainly for the days and years of the Hebrew calendar.^[41] A double mark placed before the last letter shows that a group of letters is a number, not a word.^[42] Old manuscripts, and tombstones to this day, may instead put a dot above each letter of the number.^[43] The year counts from Creation as reckoned in the rabbinic tradition.^[44] It begins at Rosh Hashanah.^[45] Its first day, 1 Tishrei, now falls between early September and early October.^[46] To convert, add 3760 to a common-era year before Rosh Hashanah, or 3761 after it; in reverse, subtract.^[47] The year may be written with its thousands or without them.^[48] The short form is called the minor era, so a letter may give 637 where you expect 5637.^[49] Finally, if the language is Yiddish, read the vowel letters as vowels, but expect Hebrew words inside it in their Hebrew spelling.^[50]