From English to Hebrew

How it works

Type a word or name in English in the one field at the top of the laboratory. A list opens under it. Each line shows a Hebrew spelling, what it means and a tag that says where the spelling comes from. Tap one and it becomes your term. You can add up to 6 terms. Or skip all of this and type the Hebrew yourself with the on-screen keyboard.

We never pick for you. A sequence belongs to one exact string of letters, so the choice of string is the most important decision in a search. It should be yours, and you should see it happening.

What the tags mean

Transliteration deserves a warning. It spells a sound. It has no meaning in Hebrew and no history of use. If your term is a transliteration, the tag says so, and that remains true wherever you share the result.

Why one word has several spellings

Hebrew can write a vowel with a letter or leave it out. The same word can be spelled full or defective, and both are correct. Jerusalem is the clearest example. The Tanakh writes ירושלם 660 times and the fuller ירושלים only 4 times, and the fuller form is today's spelling. At skips 2 to 5,000 the Torah has 553 sequences of the first and 73 of the second. They are different searches.

Other things multiply spellings. Hebrew attaches small words to the front of a word: ה for "the", ו for "and", ב for "in", ל for "to". Foreign names have several accepted forms. Names of months and dates have many forms, and the dates guide covers them.

The 1994 rabbis experiment was built with spelling rules set out in its appendix, and most of the later dispute turned on names and spellings. A small change of spelling can change a result a great deal. This is the reason the choice is shown to you each time.

Each spelling is a try

Suppose your name has four reasonable Hebrew spellings, and you try each with three skip ranges. That is twelve searches. The result that looks best is the best of twelve, and the chance figure beside it was worked out for one. The trial counter keeps this count for you and says so in plain words.

The fair way is to choose your spelling before you search. Ask someone who writes Hebrew, or use the form in the Tanakh if there is one. Lock it, then run it once.

Why not search an English Bible?

A sequence depends on one exact string of letters. A translation has different letters in a different order, so any sequence found there says nothing about the Hebrew. We search one text, in Hebrew, and our English is the JPS 1917 translation shown beneath each verse. The English helps you read. It is never searched.

Short terms deserve a word too. A term must have at least 2 letters and at most 12. Short terms have huge counts. Two or three letters will appear so often that a single sequence tells you nothing at all. Five or more letters give you a count you can actually compare with chance.

A good first search

1. Pick a word from the Tanakh with four to six letters. Use the Tanakh tag so that the spelling is the text's own.
2. Leave the skip range at 2 to 5,000 and the scope at the Torah.
3. Read the answer line first: the count and the chance figure.
4. Press Run 25 shuffles to see how a text with no order behaves.
5. Open a matrix, tap a letter and read the verse it stands in.

You will get a feel for the numbers in about ten minutes. A free account is enough. It includes 10 searches, and any search you have already run stays open for free.