Hebrew has one small word that turns a preposition into a conjunction, and it is ש. לפני on its own means before and expects a thing; add ש and it means before and expects a sentence. Once you see that, half of Hebrew's time expressions come for free. The word כש־ itself has its own page, כש־ and כאשר, and the bare prepositions are on לפני and אחרי.
The six connectives
| With ש (a clause follows) | Meaning | Without ש (no clause follows) |
|---|---|---|
| לפני ש־ | before | לפני הארוחה |
| אחרי ש־ | after | אחרי הסרט |
| עד ש־ | until | עד יום חמישי |
| מאז ש־ | since, ever since | מאז 2010 |
| ברגע ש־ | the moment (that) | ברגע האחרון |
| כל פעם ש־ | every time (that) | כל פעם מחדש |
לפני שהתחלנו לאכול הוא צילם את כל הצלחות.
lifnéi shehitkhálnu le'ekhól hu tsilém et kol hatsalakhót
Before we started eating he photographed every single plate.
אחרי שהילדים נרדמו סוף סוף ישבנו לראות סרט.
akharéi shehayeladím nirdemú sof sof yashávnu lir'ót séret
After the kids finally fell asleep we sat down to watch a film.
חיכיתי עד שהאוטובוס האחרון עזב, ואז הבנתי שפספסתי אותו.
khikíti ad sheha'otóbus ha'akharón azáv, ve'áz hevánti shefispásti otó
I waited until the last bus pulled out, and then realised I'd missed it.
מאז שעברנו לשכונה הזאת אנחנו כמעט לא נוסעים במכונית.
me'áz she'avárnu lashkhuná hazót anákhnu kim'át lo nos'ím bamekhonít
Since we moved to this neighbourhood we hardly ever use the car.
ברגע שהמנהל יצא כולם התחילו לדבר.
baréga shehamenahél yatsá kulám hitkhílu ledabér
The moment the manager walked out everyone started talking.
כל פעם שאני מנסה להתקשר אליה התא הקולי עונה.
kol pá'am she'aní menasé lehitkashér eléha hatá hakolí oné
Every time I try to ring her the voicemail picks up. (m. speaker)
Noun on one side, clause on the other
This is the whole structural point of the page, and English is what makes it hard: English uses the same word for both jobs — before the meal and before we ate, after the film and after we got home. Hebrew does not. The bare preposition takes a noun; the ש form takes a clause with a verb in it.
לפני הארוחה כולם שטפו ידיים.
lifnéi ha'arukhá kulám shatfú yadáyim
Before the meal everyone washed their hands. (a noun after the bare preposition)
Third possibility, and it is a trap: an infinitive is not a clause, and לפני and אחרי do not take one. English before leaving and after eating have no Hebrew word-for-word equivalent — the Hebrew is either a clause (לפני שיצא) or a noun (לפני היציאה). The measurements and the worked errors are on the pa'al infinitive and abstract nouns; all you need here is the rule.
The tense inside the clause
Short version: give the verb the tense its own event actually has. Because לפני ש־ and עד ש־ usually point forward, that very often means a future verb where English forces a present — נחכה עד שהיא תסיים, "we'll wait until she finishes". This is the single most common mistake with these words, and it has a page to itself: temporal clauses and their tense.
The mirror case is אחרי ש־, which normally reports something already over — and Hebrew is content with a plain past where English reaches for a perfect. There is no Hebrew equivalent of after I had finished; there is only אחרי שגמרתי.
אחרי שגמרתי לדבר איתו הבנתי שלא שאלתי את הדבר הכי חשוב.
akharéi shegamárti ledabér itó hevánti sheló sha'álti et hadavár hakhí khashúv
After I'd finished talking to him I realised I hadn't asked the most important thing.
עד שהגעת! — the exclamation
Said with the stress landing hard on עד and a sharp fall afterwards, עד ש־ stops being a conjunction and becomes an exclamation of relief, roughly English finally! or about time!.
עד שהגעת! חיכינו לך חצי שעה.
ad shehigáta! khikínu lekhá khatsí sha'á
Finally! We've been waiting half an hour for you. (informal, to one man)
Honesty about this one: Milog has no entry for עד ש at all, so this page presents it as what it is — an everyday spoken formula that every Israeli produces and no dictionary consulted here records, rather than a dictionary idiom.
Signs, forms, and formal writing
Public notices avoid clauses altogether and use the bare preposition with a noun, because it is shorter and addresses nobody in particular: לפני הכניסה, אחרי השימוש, לפני התשלום. This is not only a sign convention — a fluent speaker reaches for the noun in ordinary speech too, and the nouns that do the work are the verbal nouns Hebrew makes freely from any verb.
| Clause | Noun instead |
|---|---|
| לפני שיצאנו | לפני היציאה |
| אחרי שאכלנו | אחרי הארוחה |
| מאז שעברנו | מאז המעבר |
| עד שנודיע לכם | עד ההודעה הבאה |
For while and as long as — בזמן ש־, כל עוד — see durative conjunctions, which work the same way but describe a stretch of time rather than a point in it.
In writing you will also meet two connectives that nobody uses in conversation. לאחר ש־ is simply the written twin of אחרי ש־: measured with the same probe on both sides, insource:/ לאחר שהוא / returns 1,128 in he.wikipedia against 241 for insource:/ אחרי שהוא / (17 August 2026; the larger figure is a floor rather than an exact count). Encyclopedic Hebrew prefers the formal one by roughly four or five to one — which tells you exactly where each belongs.
לאחר שהתקבלה ההחלטה פורסמה הודעה לעיתונות.
le'akhár shehitkablá hahakhlatá pursemá hoda'á la'itonút
After the decision was taken, a press release was issued. (formal — לאחר ש is the written twin of אחרי ש)
בטרם means before and belongs to legal, official and elevated writing. It takes a clause directly, with no ש at all.
בטרם ייחתם ההסכם יש לאשר את הנוסח הסופי.
betérem yekhatém haheském yesh le'ashér et hanusákh hasofí
Before the agreement is signed the final wording must be approved. (formal — in speech this is לפני שחותמים)
Common Mistakes
1. A bare preposition in front of a whole sentence. English since we live here is one word plus a clause, so nothing prompts you to add anything.
❌ מאז אנחנו גרים כאן לא ראינו אותם
Incorrect — a clause needs ש: מאז שאנחנו גרים כאן לא ראינו אותם. Bare מאז takes a noun or a date instead: מאז המעבר, מאז 2010.
✅ מאז שאנחנו גרים כאן לא ראינו אותם אפילו פעם אחת.
me'áz she'anákhnu garím kan lo ra'ínu otám afílu pá'am akhát
Since we've been living here we haven't seen them even once.
2. The ש form in front of a noun. The mirror image, and it happens the moment a learner starts treating לפני ש as a single vocabulary item.
❌ לפני שהשיעור יש הפסקה של עשר דקות
Incorrect — השיעור is a noun, so the ש has nothing to introduce: לפני השיעור יש הפסקה של עשר דקות. With a verb it would be לפני שהשיעור מתחיל.
✅ לפני השיעור יש הפסקה של עשר דקות בחצר.
lifnéi hashi'úr yesh hafsaká shel éser dakót bekhatsér
Before the lesson there's a ten-minute break in the yard.
3. Writing ש as a separate word. ש is a proclitic: it is glued to the word after it and never stands alone.
❌ לפני ש יצאתי כיביתי את האור
Incorrect as a spelling — ש attaches to the following word with no space: לפני שיצאתי כיביתי את האור.
✅ לפני שיצאתי כיביתי את האור בסלון ונעלתי.
lifnéi sheyatsáti kibíti et ha'ór basalón vena'álti
Before I left I turned off the light in the living room and locked up.
4. Reaching for an infinitive. After eating looks translatable and is not. Use a clause (אחרי שאכלנו) or a noun (אחרי הארוחה) — never an infinitive after לפני or אחרי.
Key Takeaways
- ש is the clause marker. לפני הארוחה takes a noun; לפני שאכלנו takes a clause. The test is whether a verb follows.
- The six everyday connectives are לפני ש־, אחרי ש־, עד ש־, מאז ש־, ברגע ש־ and כל פעם ש־, and every one of them is built the same way.
- No infinitive after לפני or אחרי: it is either a clause or a noun.
- The tense inside the clause follows the event: a future event takes a future verb — נחכה עד שהיא תסיים — where English uses a present, and a finished one takes a plain past (אחרי שגמרתי) where English reaches for a perfect.
- עד שהגעת! with a falling contour means finally! — an everyday spoken formula, though no dictionary consulted here lists it.
- לאחר ש־ and בטרם are the written twins; he.wikipedia prefers לאחר שהוא to אחרי שהוא by roughly four or five to one, which is exactly the register difference.
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- לפני and אחרי: Before and AfterA2 — Use לפני and אחרי for time, space and sequence, with personal suffixes and the crucial noun-versus-clause distinction.
- כש־ and כאשר: WhenA2 — כש־ is the everyday when — an attached prefix taking a whole clause, as in כשהגעתי הביתה גיליתי שאין חשמל — and כאשר is its formal twin with identical syntax. The rule that decides whether your sentence works is the tense: for a future event Hebrew puts a future verb inside the clause, כשנחזור מהחופשה נתחיל לחפש דירה, exactly where English forces a present.
- Temporal Clauses and Their TenseB1 — After כש־, אחרי ש־, לפני ש־, עד ש־, מאז ש־ and בזמן ש־, Hebrew puts a future verb in the clause when the event is in the future — אחרי שאסיים, אלך הביתה — where English forces a present. All six need a ש in front of a clause, and their bare twins לפני, אחרי and בזמן take a noun instead.
- בזמן ש־, בעוד ש־, כל עודC1 — Three connectives that all come out of a dictionary as while, and none of which is a synonym of the others: בזמן ש־ is genuine simultaneity, כל עוד is a condition wearing a time word's clothes, and בעוד is two separate constructions sharing one spelling — בעוד שבוע is 'in a week', בעוד שהוא is a clause. Plus what modern writing actually does with בעוד ש, which is not what the dictionaries record.