The Ashkenazic (Eastern European) pronounciation differs from the Sephardic (Medtierranean/Israeli) pronounciation. This is most obvious on the softer pronounciation of the letter tav as “th” (accented), as in the OP’s “beth,” or “s” (unaccented), as in “Shabbos.” In the Sephardic pronounciation, tav is always pronounced as “t.”
The other big difference is the pronounciation of the vowel kametz as a long “o,” as in “Shabbos.” In Sephardic, kametz is pronounced “a” as in “tav,” and kametz-katan more as a short “o” as in “kol.”
There’s a thing in Hebrew called the dagesh. It’s sort of a stress point, and its written as a dot in the middle of the letter. It appears due to various verb structures, due to certain letter doublings (for instance, the word “added” in Hebrew would be written "ad{dagesh}ed), and wth some letters, due to their location in a word. The dagesh changes the way a letter is pronounced. In some letters, it’s a major change - for instance, a Bet with a dagesh is promounced “B”; without a dagesh, “V” - and in other letters, it’s simply a minor stress, if it’s heard at all.
Now, there’s something you have to remember aboiut Hebrew - that the language spoken today in Israel, while thousands of years old, is also quite new. Over two thousands years of exile, with Hebrew kept only as an ecclastical language, various pronounciations evolved. The two major streams were Sephardic, which was Spanish and Arabic based, and Ashkenazic, which was German based. Pronounciation of modern Hebrew, for various reasons, is largely based on a simplified form of Sephardic.
Why is this important? Because in Sephardic Hebrew, the Tav (the letter T) was pronounced as a hard “T” with or without a dagesh. In Ashkenazic Hebrew, Tav with a dagesh was a hard “T”, while Tav without a dagesh was pronounced asa “Th” or even an “S.” That’s why the Hebrew word “Shabbat” is promounced by Ashkenazic Jews as “Shabbess”, and by non-Jews, “Sabbath”.
Most American Jews are Ashkenazic. Modern Hebrew has only started seeping in to American liturgy over the last few decades. The Tav at the end of the word “Beit” (“house of-”) doesn’t have a dagesh… and that’s why you see all those "beth"s.
In America, it is common to see Hebrew words that are written with “TH” and pronounced (incorrectly) by Americans the way it would be in English.
For example: a synagogue name like “Beth Tefila”-- the first word is pronounced in America just like the girl’s name elizabeth.
But this is an oddity of modern America, I think. There are no Hebrew or Yiddish speakers anywhere else who would read that name as Beth. It would be pronounced (and written) as either as “bait” or as “bais” (rhyme with “bate” and “base” respectively).
(another example is the organization “Bnai Brith”, whose second word as pronounced by Americans sounds like “with”. Hebrew speakers would pronounce it like either “Brit” or “Bris” (rhyme with “grit” or “wrist”, respectively)
I think the use of “TH” is a remnant of old rules of grammar–not rules of pronunciation. As Alessan said above, there is a grammatical mark in Hebrew called a dagesh. When transcribing to English, the letter “h” was added to the words ending in “T” as a way of distinguishing (in the English alphabet) a letter that, in the Hebrew alphabet, would be written without the dagesh mark.
The “h” was never intended to be pronounced,–it was just added by Hebrew scholars for grammatical accuracy. But when modern English speakers see the “Th” combination, they pronounce it the way it looks in English.
I’ve always thought of it as a cop-out way of dealing with the t/s issue - you sidestep the question entirely by using this odd scholarly spelling that corresponds with neither pronunciation, and thus everyone pronounces it as they like. The synogogue in which I grew up spells the first word of its name as Adath, but I’ve almost never heard anybody pronounce it like that - nearly everyone says it Adas.
Very interesting, GilaB, as I was just about to note that one synagogue I go to, the first word of its name is pronounced A-das (accent on first syllable) – and in Sephardic Hebrew it is pronounced a-DAT (accent on second syllable). Are you from DC?
Note in passing: Hebrew normally stresses the final syllable in a word.
Alessan, what are the reasons that modern Israeli Hebrew is simplified Sephardic? And how does Israeli Hebrew differ from Sephardic Hebrew?
Two main reasons. First of all, the linguists (linguist, actually) who revived Hebrew in the late 19th century decided that Sephardic Hebrew was in all likelihood closer to the Hebrew spoken in biblical times. This makes sense - Sephardic speech is heavily influenced by Arabic, a Semetic language with many similarities to Hebrew; Ashkenazic Hebrew was influenced by German, a much more distant relative. Beyond that, I belive actual research on ancient Hebrew was reviewed.
The second reason was political. At the time, hebrew was in direct competition with Yiddish as the the Jewish Language. Yiddish contains a great number of Hebrew loan-words, all spoken in the Ashkenazic manner. I suppose they wanted to distance Hebrew as far from Yiddish as they could.
Incidentally, Hebrew usually stresses the last vowel. I’d say that in about 10% of words the next to last vowell is stressed instead. Either way, it’s always one of the last two vowells.