Learning Hebrew over the Last 10 Years
by Neal Walters. In 1990, I was planning a trip to Israel, but it got postponed due to Desert Storm and the Gulf War. I finally go on a tour trip of Israel in 1996. But in the late 80s, in Oklahoma, before the internet, how does one begin to learn Hebrew? That was in the dark ages before internet. Audio Forum had a language catalog, and I learned about the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) courses. These courses were created by the US government, and used to teach either military or diplomats. Although the FSI course came with about 24 tapes, I still have never completed it. The type-style is ugly, and the course was clearly not made for self-study, but instead was made to be taught in a classroom environment. Back then, Borders was building it’s first huge book stores in large cities. On a business trip, I visited one, and found a small selection of Hebrew books not normally found in other bookstores. The book that helped me master the alphabet was a “reader” that was full of practice exercises of reading short two to four letter syllables or words. I began learning more and more prayer book Hebrew by attending synagogue. Each week, certain tunes would stick in my mind, and I would go home and try to learn the words to go with the tune. Music and singing definitely helps with the memorization. To learn more Biblical Hebrew, I used Mansoor’s book, “Biblical Hebrew: Step by Step”. After that, a friend was teaching Biblical Hebrew to a small group, using Weingreen’s “A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew”. This is another book that would be hard to pick up and learn on your own. By completing one lesson every week or two, we finished the book in about two years. To really know Hebrew, one must study both Biblical and Modern. I remember using two short courses that were books that came with 3 or 4 cassette tapes: “Hugo Language Course: Hebrew in Three Months” and also Eliezar Tirkel’s “Every Hebrew”. I found that I liked the Hugo course slightly better, but learned something from each. In 2005, I registered for Hebrew IV and V via an online course offered by Hebrew College in Boston. It used the text “Hebrew From Scratch - Part II” (with 5 CDs available). Even though I audited the course, it was required to submit homework weekly, and meet with our teacher online for about 45 minutes per week. Later, I went on to take other classes, which include an introduction to Aramaic via the Talmud, and classes that required reading Medieval Hebrew (such as aggadic literature). Unfortunately, I still can’t speak Hebrew as well as I would like. My journey is still continuing. By creating software, and teaching others, I continue to learn each and every day. You can too learn Hebrew faster and easier with the multimedia Hebrew courses created by Neal Walters.