אפס

The Hebrew word "אפס" (efes) for zero has a complex history tied to the development of number systems. In ancient number systems used in Israel and surrounding regions, there was no concept of zero as we understand it today. These systems used separate symbols for numbers like 1, 10, 100, and 1,000, combining them to represent other amounts. The concept of zero as a placeholder in a decimal number system originated in India and reached the Middle East through Arab mathematicians. In 820 CE, Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi published his influential work on Hindu arithmetic, introducing this system to the Arab world. In Arabic, he called zero "صفر" (sifr), meaning "empty," a translation of the Sanskrit term "śūnya." The word "sifr" evolved into the Latin "cifra," which eventually gave us both "cipher" and "zero" in English, and "Ziffer" in German. In Hebrew, the first known mathematical text to introduce the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was Abraham ibn Ezra's "Sefer HaMispar" (Book of Number) in the 12th century, where he called zero "galgal" (wheel or circle). The first known use of "אפס" (efes) specifically for zero appears to be in Rabbi David Friesenhausen's "Kelil HaCheshbon" (Berlin, 1796). This usage was solidified by Yehuda Leib Ben-Zeev in his German-Hebrew dictionary in 1808, and in 1834, mathematician Chaim Zelig Slonimski used "efes" in his mathematical textbook "Sefer Mosdei Chochma," which was widely used in early Hebrew schools in Palestine and Eastern Europe.