The Hebrew letter Tess
Tess is the ninth of the 22 letters of the alef beis. It is written ט in print, in ksiva it is written as a single unbroken stroke, and its gematria value is 9. It sounds like t. My Ksiva Workbook teaches it on page 24.
Tess is the ninth letter, value 9 — the last of the single digits, which is why the alef beis starts counting in tens at yud. Its print form curls inward at the top left, a move nothing else in the alphabet repeats.
- Position 9 of 22
- Gematria 9
- Sound t
- Ksiva strokes One
- Taught on page 24 of 82
How is Tess written?
The workbook teaches every letter the same four ways, so a child always knows what is being asked of them.
See both forms. The workbook opens the letter with Tess in print and in ksiva side by side, and marks the ksiva form with a numbered arrow showing where the stroke begins.
Trace it. A row of dotted outlines gives the whole shape. The child writes over the top of it, so the hand learns the movement before it has to remember the shape.
Finish it. Each box after that gives a little less of the letter than the one before, until the last box is empty and the child writes it unaided.
Use it in a word. The letter then appears in whole words to copy in script, built only from letters already taught, so the child is never asked to write a letter they have not met.
What is it confused with?
Tess is hard to confuse in print. In ksiva it becomes a wide open loop running from above the writing line to below it, one of the largest ksiva letters a child has met by this point in the book.
How is it spelled in English?
This site uses the Ashkenazi transliteration the workbook prints, Tess. You will also see it written tet, teth. They are all the same letter.
Where it is taught
Tess is taught on page 24 of My Ksiva Workbook, an 82-page Hebrew handwriting workbook covering all 22 letters in both scripts. Every letterform on this page is taken from the book itself.