Zhe, Zha, or Zhu, sometimes transliterated as Že (Ж ж; italics: Ж ж or Ж ж; italics: Ж ж) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced retroflex sibilant /ʐ/ (listen) or voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/, like the pronunciation of the ⟨s⟩ in "measure". It is also often used with D (Д) to approximate the sound in English of the Latin letter J with a ДЖ combination. Zhe is romanized as ⟨zh⟩, ⟨j⟩ or ⟨ž⟩.

It is not known how the character for Zhe was derived. No similar letter exists in Greek, Latin or any other alphabet of the time, though there is some graphic similarity with its Glagolitic counterpart Zhivete ⟨Ⰶ⟩ (Image: ) which represents the same sound. However, the origin of Zhivete, like that of most Glagolitic letters, is unclear.^{[citation needed]}

One possibility is that it was formed from the pronunciation of Hebrew letter Zayin ⟨ז⟩ combined with the Hebrew letter Shin ⟨ש⟩ letter, to eventually form the Modern Hebrew letter of Zhayin ⟨'ז⟩, with a geresh ⟨'⟩ on top for distinction.

Zhe may also be derived from the Coptic letter janjia ⟨Ϫ⟩, supported by the phonetic value (janjia represents the sound /d͡ʒ/ in Coptic) and shape of the letter, which the Glagolitic counterpart Zhivete ⟨Ⰶ⟩ resembles even more closely. The form of the letter also may be derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a drill:

Some Ukrainian scholars argue that it represents the shape of a beetle, since Zhe is the first phoneme in the Slavic word жукъ (žuk), meaning "beetle".

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet the name of Zhe was живѣтє (živěte), meaning "live" (imperative).

Zhe was not used in the Cyrillic numeral system.

Zhe is used in the alphabets of all Slavic languages using a Cyrillic alphabet, and of most non-Slavic languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. The position in the alphabet and the sound represented by the letter vary from language to language.