How to Read a Hebrew Gravestone (Matzevah)

A Jewish gravestone (מצבה, matzevah) usually carries more information in Hebrew than in English: the person's Hebrew name, their father's name, whether the family were kohanim or levites, and the exact Hebrew date of death. The Hebrew follows a small number of fixed formulas, so you can read most stones with a short list of words, abbreviations and the letter-number system. This page covers Ashkenazi stones of the last two hundred years, the kind found in most Jewish cemeteries in Europe, North America, Britain and Australia. Sephardi stones use some different formulas and layouts.

The usual layout, top to bottom

Not every stone has every line, but the order is very stable:

1. The opening: פ"נ or פ"ט, "here lies".
2. A title or a few words of praise: "the esteemed woman", "an upright man".
3. The name: the person's Hebrew name, then בן or בת and the father's name.
4. The date of death: day, month and year in Hebrew letters.
5. Sometimes a short poem or epitaph, often an acrostic of the name.
6. The closing: ת.נ.צ.ב.ה., a blessing for the soul.

Symbols carved above the text can add information. Two hands with the fingers spread in pairs mark a kohen (a descendant of the priests); a pitcher marks a levite; Shabbat candlesticks are common on women's stones. Other carvings (books, a broken tree, a Star of David) are used more freely and do not follow one rule.

The opening: פ"נ and פ"ט

All of these mean "here lies". The abbreviation alone does not tell you whether the person was a man or a woman; the words that follow will.

The name

The formula is the person's name, then בן (son of) or בת (daughter of), then the father's Hebrew name. Ashkenazi stones use the father's name, not the mother's.

• יעקב בן אברהם: Yaakov son of Avraham
• חיה רבקה בת שמואל: Chaya Rivka daughter of Shmuel

Titles come before the names:

A married woman is sometimes named through her husband as well: אשת ר' יוסף, "wife of Reb Yosef".

After the father's name you may find הכהן (the kohen) or הלוי (the levite). This is a family line, passed from father to son, and it is often the most useful single word on the stone for a genealogist. A woman's stone that ends בת ר' שמואל הלוי tells you her father was a levite. Two abbreviations say the same thing and are easy to miss: כ"ץ (כהן צדק, a kohen) and סג"ל (סגן לויה, a levite). They are where the surnames Katz and Segal come from.

When the father's name is followed by ז"ל (of blessed memory) or ע"ה (peace be upon him), the father had already died when the stone was set. That small mark can date his death before your ancestor's.

Many Ashkenazi men's names come in fixed pairs, a Hebrew name with its Yiddish partner: דוב בער (Dov Ber), צבי הירש (Tzvi Hirsch), אריה לייב (Aryeh Leib), זאב וואלף (Ze'ev Volf). Each pair is one name, not a first and middle name, and the same man may appear in civil records under either half.

The surname is often missing from the Hebrew side. Look for it in Latin letters on the same stone, on the back, or on the cemetery's records.

Words of praise

These sit between the opening and the name. They are formulas, not personal descriptions, but they still tell you something about how the family saw the person.

The date of death

The date is written with letters as numbers (gematria): א to ט are 1 to 9, י to צ are 10 to 90 in tens, ק ר ש ת are 100, 200, 300 and 400. Add them up. Final letters at the end of a number count the same as the ordinary letter, so ץ is 90 and ך is 20. Fifteen is written ט"ו and sixteen ט"ז, to avoid spelling part of God's name.

Words that introduce the date:

The year. The thousands are usually left off. The letters give the hundreds, tens and units, and you add 5000:

• תר = 600, so a year beginning תר is in 5600–5699, roughly 1840 to 1939.
• תש = 700, so a year beginning תש is in 5700–5799, roughly 1939 to 2039.
• תש"פ = ת 400 + ש 300 + פ 80 = 780, the year 5780.

Some stones write the thousands too, as ה' in front: ה'תש"פ.

Converting. The Jewish year starts in September or October. For a date from January up to the Jewish New Year, add 1240 to the short year; for a date from the New Year to December, add 1239. 5780 began on 30 September 2019, so a death in Nisan 5780 was in spring 2020.

Which day. A Jewish day begins at nightfall. Someone who died on a Tuesday evening after dark has Wednesday's Hebrew date on the stone, which is why the Hebrew and civil dates on one stone sometimes look a day apart. The Hebrew date is also what the family uses for the yahrzeit, the yearly anniversary.

Months, in order from the autumn: תשרי, חשון (or מרחשון), כסלו, טבת, שבט, אדר, ניסן, אייר, סיון, תמוז, אב (or מנחם אב), אלול. In a leap year there are two Adars: אדר א' and אדר ב'.

For the exact day and weekday, type the date as it is written on the stone into the Hebrew date converter on my site. It shows how the letters add up, so you can check each step against the stone.

The closing: ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Almost every stone ends with these five letters, often spaced across the bottom line:

תהא נשמתו (נשמתה) צרורה בצרור החיים, "may his (her) soul be bound up in the bond of life". The words come from Abigail's blessing to David in 1 Samuel 25:29.

Acrostics

Many stones carry a short poem whose lines begin with the letters of the person's name, read downward. The first letter of each line is often carved larger, set apart, or marked with a dot. If the lines of a poem begin ח, י, ה, the poem is spelling the name חיה. When a name in the poem looks unfamiliar, check the acrostic: it confirms the spelling the family used.

Older stones, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, sometimes hide the year in a verse instead, with certain letters marked so that their values add up to the year. If a stone has no plain date, look for letters with dots or lines above them.

A worked example

This is a composed inscription, laid out the way a typical stone from the 1930s would be. It is not a real person.

פ"נ

האשה החשובה

מרת חיה רבקה

בת ר' שמואל הלוי

נפטרה בשם טוב

ביום ה' ז' טבת

שנת תרצ"ט לפ"ק

ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.

Line by line:

The date, worked out. ת 400 + ר 200 + צ 90 + ט 9 = 699, so 5699. Tevet comes after the New Year, and this date falls in December, so add 1239: 1938. A converter gives 7 Tevet 5699 as Thursday, 29 December 1938, which matches יום ה' on the stone.

What a genealogist takes from it: her Hebrew name (Chaya Rivka), her father's Hebrew name (Shmuel), that her father's family were levites, and an exact date of death to check against civil records.

A shorter stone for a man might read פ"נ / איש תם וישר / ר' יעקב יוסף ב"ר אברהם הכהן / נלב"ע עש"ק י"ז אדר תש"ה / ת.נ.צ.ב.ה.: "Here lies a whole and upright man, Reb Yaakov Yosef son of Reb Avraham the kohen, departed to his eternal home on Friday, 17 Adar 5705", which was 2 March 1945. He was a kohen, so you would expect the carved hands above the text.

When a stone is hard to read

Worn letters are the usual problem. Photograph the stone in low, slanting light (early morning or late afternoon), or shade it and light it from the side with a torch. Do not rub chalk or shaving cream into the stone; both damage it. Most of all, use the formulas: if you can read פ"נ, בת and ת.נ.צ.ב.ה., you already know where the name and the date must be.