U+05A8 HEBREW ACCENT QADMA

U+05A8 was added to Unicode in version 2.0 (1996). It belongs to the block Hebrew in the Basic Multilingual Plane.

This character is a Nonspacing Mark and is mainly used in the Hebrew script. The character is also known as azla.

The glyph is not a composition. It has a Neutral East Asian Width. In bidirectional context it acts as Nonspacing Mark and is not mirrored. The glyph can, under circumstances, be confused with 2 other glyphs. In text U+05A8 behaves as Combining Mark regarding line breaks. It has type Extend for sentence and Extend for word breaks. The Grapheme Cluster Break is Extend.

The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:

Kadma (Hebrew קַדְמָ֨א, with variant English spellings) is a common cantillation mark found in the Torah, Haftarah, and other books of the Hebrew Bible. It can be found by itself preceding certain trope groups, or together with a Geresh, in which case, the pair is known as "Kadma-V'Azla."

Kadma has the same symbol as the Pashta, though Kadma is distinct from Pashta in the placement of the symbol. In a Kadma, the symbol is always placed on the first syllable of the word, while Pashta is placed on the last syllable.

The symbols for Kadma V'Azla are designed to resemble the fingers of an outstretched hand in a curved position.

The Kadma-V'Azla pair occurs 1733 times in the Torah.

The word Kadma is related to the Hebrew קדמה (kedma), east. It is also related to the root קדם, front. The combination of these words translates to going away.