Fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet; on its form see Alphabet . It is a guttural, pronounced as the English "h," standing midway between א and ת, and sometimes interchanged with these two. At the end of a word it is generally mute. It is an important element in Hebrew grammar, serving as an article, as a demonstrative pronoun, as a particle of interrogation, and as the characteristic letter of the verbal forms "hif'il," "hof'al," and (in part) "hitpa'el." As a numeral it has the value of 5. The Tetragrammaton is sometimes represented by ת, as being the second letter of .
Categories: [Jewish encyclopedia 1906]