Days of the week in Hebrew: yom rishon to Shabbat, with vowel points

A week of numbers: first day, second day, sixth day

The days of the week in Hebrew have no names in the sense English does. Each is יום, day, followed by an ordinal number: ראשון, first, for Sunday; שני, second, for Monday; then שלישי, רביעי, חמישי and שישי, third to sixth. They are the same words that count anything else, so יום שני is literally the second day, and the ordinal שני is also the ordinary word for second in a list.

The count starts on Sunday because the week ends on the Sabbath. Saturday is the seventh day, and it alone has a proper name, שבת, the day of rest. Wiktionary lists it as a feminine noun meaning Sabbath and Saturday and records the possibility that the word was borrowed from Akkadian šapattum, a name for the middle day of the lunar month.

The days of the week in Hebrew thus follow the second of the three patterns described on the site's days of the week page, counting instead of planets or gods. Arabic counts the same way, so Monday is יום שני in Hebrew and الإثنين, the second, in Arabic, and the Aramaic row of the same table shows the older Semitic form, יום תרין בשבה, day two of the week.

Niqqud, spelling and the romanisation

Everyday Hebrew is written without vowel points. Newspapers, signs and calendars print יום ראשון, and readers supply the vowels from knowledge of the words. Children's books, poetry, dictionaries and texts for learners add niqqud, the dots and dashes above, below and inside the letters: יוֹם רִאשׁוֹן. The table gives both forms for that reason.

Without vowel points, extra letters help the reader. Friday may be written יום שישי, with a yod marking the i, or the shorter יום ששי, and the site's table lists both. The pointed form needs no extra yod: יוֹם שִׁשִּׁי.

The romanisation follows Wiktionary's scheme and marks the stressed syllable: yóm rishón, yóm shishí. Other systems differ. The Wikipedia article on the romanisation of Hebrew sets them side by side: the Academy of the Hebrew Language replaced its 1953 rules with new ones in 2006 and still keeps ẖ for ח apart from kh for כ, while the scholarly ISO 259 writes ḥ, ṣ and š. The names in the FAQ below are given in a plain spelling without accents, as English texts usually print them.

Sunday to Thursday: the working week in Israel

In Israel the counting of the week is also the shape of the working week. The Wikipedia article on workweek and weekend gives the standard Israeli week as five days, Sunday to Thursday, with 42 hours set by law; a minority of jobs run from Sunday to Friday. The weekend is Friday and Saturday, because the Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday until full darkness on Saturday.

Yom rishon is therefore the first working day of the Israeli week, where English-speaking countries have Monday. Friday, יום שישי, ends at sunset with the start of the Sabbath, and the site's days table records ערב שבת, the eve of the Sabbath, as a second name for it. Saturday night after the Sabbath has its own expression, מוצאי שבת, motsa'é shabát, which Wiktionary lists among the derivatives of שבת.

Shabbat shalom and shavua tov

Two greetings belong to the week itself. שבת שלום, shabát shalóm, a peaceful Sabbath, is said from Friday into Saturday. When the Sabbath is over, people wish each other שבוע טוב, shavúa tov, a good week; Wiktionary describes it as used from Saturday night through Sunday and sometimes later, and traces it to Yiddish a gute vokh.

Dates in the traditional style combine a weekday with the day and year of the Hebrew calendar, both written in letter numerals: יום שני ט״ו באדר תשס״ד is Monday, 15 Adar 5764. The months in Hebrew and the numbers in Hebrew explain how such a date is read.