And even the ones that do know might not use it out of laziness. However, most people don’t know there’s a special Unicode character for gershayim (U+05F4 in case anyone is curious) or don’t know how to type it (since it’s not found on most keyboards), so they sub in a quotation mark ( “ ) instead. Those two lines that look like a quotation mark between the last two letters are not two yuds, but a special symbol called gershayim ( ״ ), which goes between the last two letters and signifies that the string of letters is not a real word but an abbreviation, acronym, number, or some other non-word thing. The 5000 is understood and is nearly always left off.

To break it down, ת is 400, ש is 300, ע is 70, and ז is 7. This form of Hebrew numerology, called Gematria, is used both for banal counting like this, and to illustrate profound mystical teachings. Since at least the Hellenic period, Jews have used an alphabetic counting system where each letter has a number value. (the current year is 5776 but it’ll be 5777 in november when the elections are)” The Jewish year begins at Rosh Hashana, which this year starts October 2, so having that year on the button is essentially a very Jewish way of saying Sanders 2016. How does this work? And what’s the deal with those two yud-looking things on the button? 1 Earlier this week, I came across this conversation on Tumblr:ĭo you know what תשעייז means? I found it on a Bernie Sanders button and Google translate has failed me thus far.Īs other users correctly pointed out, “It’s the Jewish year (5)777.

Let’s talk about Hebrew punctuation for a minute. Note that the button on the left is in Hebrew and the one in the middle is in Yiddish.

Hebrew letters to insert into word