The history of modern Hebrew cursive in a nutshell
(December 17, 2015)

Cursive forms of Hebrew arose in every Jewish community during the Second Exile to communicate or write in Hebrew in secular contexts (i.e., when not writing Scripture). As was the case with the cursive forms of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, and the lowercase letters and italics in the Roman script in the Middle Ages, the cursive forms of Hebrew developed in a bid to write the printed letters more quickly. Thus, the three-strokes of printed letters such as aleph, bet and tzadi became just two, two-stroke letters such as gimmel, dalet, etc. became continuous, fluid strokes, etc.:

Hebrew cursives developed from a desire to write the printed letters quickly, and with few strokes.

Interestingly, each community took its graphic cues from its Gentile surroundings. Thus, the cursive Hebrew of Ashkenazi Jews in Germany and Poland looked a lot like the Gothic of their neighbours:

Ashkenazi cursive, 14th c. (courtesy of the Bodleian Library)

the cursive of Italian Hebrew looked a lot like its native Italian counterpart:

Italian cursive, 14th c. (courtesy of the Bodleian Library)

and the writing of Sephardi Jews of Spain and North Africa was clearly inspired by the Arabic:

Sephardi cursive, 14th c. (courtesy of the Bodleian Library)

The modern cursive Hebrew is based on the cursive of Ashkenazi Jews of the 18th century onwards.