ה

The letter He, Heh or Hei, in Hebrew: ה‎, is the fifth letter in order of the Hebrew alphabet, equivalent and descendant of the Phoenician letter he (𐤄‏), which generally represents the [h] sound, although it is also used as a mater lectionis.

In modern Hebrew the frequency of the use of hei, of all the letters, is 8.18%.

Writing

In Hebrew it is written as ה, its name in Hebrew is הֵא which is transliterated as he.

Forms
Square	Manuscript	Rashi
ה

Pronunciation

In modern Hebrew, this grapheme represents the voiced glottal fricative consonant /ɦ/. In everyday speech it can be omitted as a silent letter, although this pronunciation is considered poor.

In addition, in many variant Hebrew pronunciations, the letter may represent a glottal stop.

It can also be used as mater lectionis. In word-final position, hei is used to indicate a vowel a, usually that of qamatz (ָ), and in this sense functions as aleph, vav and yud as mater lectionis, indicating the presence of a long vowel.

Hei, along with Aleph, Ayin, Reish and Khet, cannot receive a daguesh. However, it is marked identically to the dagesh, to form hei mappiq (הּ. Although indistinguishable to most modern Hebrew speakers or readers, the mapiq is placed on a word-final hei to indicate that the letter is not simply a mater lectionis, but rather that the consonant is to be aspirated in that position. Generally used in Hebrew to indicate the third-person feminine singular genitive marker. Today, such a pronunciation occurs only in religious contexts and even then, often only by careful readers of Scripture.

Use

Attached to words, Hei can have three possible meanings:

• A preposition that means the defined article "the", or the relative pronouns "that" or "who" (as in "a child" that read"). For example, yeleda child; haalreadyThe boy.
• A prefix that indicates that prayer is a question. For example, YadataYou knew; HayadataDid you know?
• A suffix after the names of places indicating the movement towards the given noun. For example, YerushalayimJerusalem; YerushalaymahTo Jerusalem.

Symbolism

In gematria hei symbolizes the number five and when used at the beginning of the Hebrew years, it means 5000. For example, התשנ״ד in numbers would be the date 5754.

Hei, representing five in gematria, is often found on amulets, symbolizing the five fingers of one hand, the Jamsa, a very common talismanic symbol.

In Judaism

He is often used to represent the name of God as an abbreviation for Hashem, which means The Name and is a way of saying God > without actually saying the name of God (YHWH). In print, Hashem is usually written as Hei with a geresh:ה׳

Unicode

Its Unicode value is U+05D4.