Hebrew cantillation gershayim

Enter the Hebrew letter first; this mark follows it.

This gershayim combining mark is nonspacing: it has no separate position of its own. Place it after the Hebrew letter whose syllable it accents, then inspect the whole word. Hebrew fonts can position a combining mark differently.

For repeated work, use a Unicode-aware Hebrew cantillation keyboard layout.

Is gershayim a quotation mark?

No. It is a biblical cantillation accent, not Hebrew punctuation.

Gershayim in a Hebrew Bible verse marks the stressed syllable, separates a phrase, and cues the reading melody. It is one of the taamim, the Hebrew signs for biblical cantillation.

The Tiberian Masoretes, Jewish scholars who preserved this reading tradition, developed written notation for how scripture was read aloud and divided into phrases. Babylonian, Palestinian, and Tiberian traditions used different sign systems; Tiberian notation later became the standard written system.

The oldest surviving copies of the Masoretic Text—the Hebrew Bible text preserved with its reading marks—or portions of it date to the ninth and tenth centuries CE. Synagogue traditions use different melodies for the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), the Haftarah (readings from the Prophets), and other readings.