Ashkenazi Hebrew (Hebrew: הֲגִיָּה אַשְׁכְּנַזִּית, romanized: hagiyoh ashkenazis, Yiddish: אַשכּנזישע הבֿרה, romanized: ashkenazishe havore) is the pronunciation system for Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew favored for Jewish liturgical use and Torah study by Ashkenazi Jewish practice.

As it is used parallel with Modern Hebrew, its phonological differences are clearly recognized:

There are considerable differences between the Lithuanian, Polish (also known as Galician), Hungarian, and German pronunciations.

In addition to geographical differences, there are differences in register between the "natural" pronunciation in general use and the more prescriptive rules advocated by some rabbis and grammarians, particularly for use in reading the Torah. For example:

In brief, Ashkenazi Hebrew appears to be a descendant of the Babylonian tradition, partially adapted to accommodate Tiberian notation, and further influenced by the pronunciation of Middle High German and its sound changes as it evolved into Yiddish.

The origins of the different Hebrew reading traditions reflect older differences between the pronunciations of Hebrew and Middle Aramaic current in different parts of the Fertile Crescent: Judea, the Galilee, Greater Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, and Lower Mesopotamia ("Babylonia"). In the time of the Masoretes (8th-10th centuries), there were three distinct notations for denoting vowels and other details of pronunciation in biblical and liturgical texts. One was the Babylonian; another was the Palestinian Hebrew; still another was Tiberian Hebrew, which eventually superseded the other two and is still in use today. By the time of Saadia Gaon and Jacob Qirqisani, Palestinian Hebrew had come to be regarded as standard, even in Babylonia. That development roughly coincided with the popularisation of the Tiberian notation.

The 14th century work Sefer Asufot is one of the only non-liturgical and non-Biblical medieval Ashkenazi texts to use nequddot. Owing to its more day-to-day vocabulary, linguists have been able to conclude that medieval Ashkenazi Hebrew was akin to contemporary Sephardi Hebrew.

In other respects, Ashkenazi Hebrew resembles Yemenite Hebrew, which appears to be related to the Babylonian notation. Shared features include the pronunciation of qamaṣ gadol as [o] and, in the case of Litvaks and some but not all Yemenites, of ḥolam as [eː]. These features are not found in the Hebrew pronunciation of North Mesopotamian Jews, which has been overlaid by Sephardi Hebrew practices, but are found in some of the Judeo-Aramaic languages of Upper Mesopotamia and in some dialects of Syriac.