Cursive Hebrew
handwritten style of Hebrew letters
Cursive Hebrew (Hebrew: כתב עברי רהוט, romanized: ktav ivri rahut, lit. 'flowing Hebrew writing'), or (Hebrew: כתב יד עברי, romanized: ktav yad 'ivri, lit. 'Hebrew handwriting') often called simply ktav (Hebrew: כתב, romanized: ktav, lit. 'writing') is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century. This is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish. It was preceded by a Sephardi cursive script, known as Solitreo, that is still used for Ladino.
Contemporary forms
As with all handwriting, cursive Hebrew displays considerable individual variation. The forms in the table below are representative of those in present-day use. The names appearing with the individual letters are taken from the Unicode standard and may differ from their designations in the various languages using them—see Hebrew alphabet § Pronunciation for variation in letter names. (Table is organized right-to-left reflecting Hebrew's lexicographic mode.)
Note: Final forms are to the left of the initial/medial forms.
Historical forms
This table shows the development of cursive Hebrew from the 7th through the 19th centuries. This is discussed in the following section, which makes reference to the columns in the table, numbered (at foot) 1 through 14.
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