בניין פועל: The Passive of Pi'el

pu'al is the passive of pi'el, and that sentence is the whole binyan. It is not a meaning you select — it is what happens to a pi'el verb when the thing being acted on becomes the subject: סידר "arranged" gives סודר "was arranged", פרסם "published" gives פורסם "was published", תרגם "translated" gives תורגם "was translated", ביטל "cancelled" gives בוטל "was cancelled".

Two structural facts follow, and both are unusual enough to state before anything else.

It has three tenses, and only three

Pealim's entry for לסדר prints the pi'el side with five sections — present, past, future, imperative, infinitive — and then prints the pu'al side with three. There is no infinitive row and no imperative row at all. They are not marked rare or literary or archaic; they are absent.

The reason is not a gap in the tables. A passive has nobody to give an order to. An imperative addresses an agent — "tidy the room!" — but the subject of a pu'al verb is precisely the thing that has no agency in the event. Hebrew never built the cell. The infinitive goes the same way: the pu'al stem is a shape that only exists carrying a prefix (מְ־, יְ־, תְּ־) or a suffix, and Hebrew never grew a bare ל־ form for it.

The vowel signature: u, then a

The pu'al shape is a u in the first syllable and an a in the second, with the middle root letter doubled. That u is the marker: it is what every Hebrew passive except nif'al does to the active's first stem vowel — pi'el's i (סִידֵּר) becomes u (סֻדַּר), and hif'il's i does the same in huf'al. nif'al does not play along at all: כתב gives נכתב, with no u anywhere.

Here is the orientation table for ס־ד־ר. The pointed column is deliberately ktiv haser — the classical spelling niqqud is written in — because that is the only place the kubuts is visible as a kubuts. The written column is what you actually meet.

Once the niqqud comes off, the vav is the whole signal: מסודר, פורסם, מבולבל, בוטל. A pi'el verb of the same root would have a yod there instead (מסדר, מפרסם) or nothing (פרסם). Learn to read that vav as "passive" and half of pu'al recognition is done.

The one systematic exception to the u

Where the middle root letter refuses a dagesh, the kubuts lengthens to a cholam by compensation — the same תשלום דגש mechanism pi'el's guttural class uses to give בירך a tsere where דיבר has a chirik. So פֵּרֵט "specified" gives פֹּרַט and מְפוֹרָט, not *פֻּרַּט.

In pu'al the letters that do this are א ע ר ה — מְתֹאָר meto'ár, מְתֹעָד meto'ád, מְפוֹרָט meforát, מְנֹהָל menohál. ח does not: ייחד gives מְיוּחָד meyukhád, keeping the kubuts, because ח takes the "hidden dagesh" instead.

Note that this class is wider than the pi'el one. In pi'el only א and ר lengthen — לְתָאֵר and לְפָרֵט take a kamatz, while ה, ע and ח all keep the short vowel (לְנַהֵל, לְתַעֵד, לְיַיחֵד). In pu'al ה and ע cross over and join א and ר, leaving ח alone on the other side. The full class is tabled on pu'al present.

In ktiv male you cannot see any of this: both a kubuts and a cholam are written with a vav, so מְסֻדָּר and מְפוֹרָט come out as מסודר and מפורט. The distinction is audible, not visible — mesudár against meforát.

pu'al is lexical, not a switch you flip

This is the point most textbooks skip. You cannot make a pu'al from any pi'el on demand. The pairing is stored in the lexicon verb by verb, and plenty of pi'el verbs have no living pu'al at all — nobody says the pu'al of טייל "went hiking" or of ביקר "visited", and Pealim prints no pu'al section for לטייל. Where a pu'al does exist, it usually exists for a reason: the verb has a real-world object that people talk about after the fact — a document, a job, a meeting, a book.

So treat pu'al the way you treat an irregular plural. Learn it with the verb, from reading, and do not generate it.

Where you will actually meet it

Not as a finite verb. In ordinary spoken Hebrew the finite pu'al is uncommon — Israelis reach for the agentless third-person plural instead, which is the subject of the impersonal plural — and the finite forms belong to news writing, minutes, and reports.

What you meet constantly is the present participle, and usually as a plain adjective: מסודר "tidy", מבולבל "confused", מפורסם "famous", מסובך "complicated", מיוחד "special". Most learners use half a dozen of these fluently for a year before anyone tells them the binyan has a name. That drift is the real life of pu'al in Modern Hebrew, and it has its own page.

Common Mistakes

1. Building a pu'al infinitive. English says "to be published" as freely as "to publish", so learners assemble a ל־ form that does not exist.

2. Giving pu'al an imperative. "Get the room sorted!" looks like it should have a passive command.

3. Dropping the vav in ktiv male. The niqqud in reference grammars is haser (פֻּרְסְמָה), so a learner copying from a textbook writes פרסמה — which is a different, active verb.

4. Using the participle as an active verb. מסודר is everywhere, so learners press it into service for "I organise".

Key Takeaways

• pu'al is pi'el's passive and nothing else. סידר → סודר, פרסם → פורסם, תרגם → תורגם, ביטל → בוטל.
• It has present, past and future only. No infinitive, no imperative — a passive has no agent to command. Pealim's לסדר entry prints five sections for pi'el and three for pu'al.
• The signature is u then a, with the middle radical doubled: מְסֻדָּר, סֻדַּר, יְסֻדַּר.
• Unpointed, the vav is the only marker: מסודר, פורסם, בוטל, מבולבל.
• Where the middle radical is א ע ר or ה the kubuts lengthens to a cholam — מְפוֹרָט, מְתֹעָד, מְנֹהָל — because those letters refuse the dagesh. ח does not: מְיוּחָד stays meyukhád. This is wider than the pi'el split, where only א and ר lengthen.
• The pairing is lexical. Many pi'el verbs have no live pu'al; learn each one with its verb rather than deriving it.
• In speech Israelis use the agentless third-person plural (הזמינו אותי) far more than a finite pu'al.
• Most of the binyan's everyday weight sits on the participle, which for many verbs has hardened into an ordinary adjective.