Easy Hebrew

[Bloggermom]

Anyone have experience with Easy Hebrew?

http://homeschool.easyhebrew.com/

I am trying to find something for Hebrew that is self-teaching because I don't know anything about it.

[Mommy to monkeys]

I have looked at that program, but don't think it would work well for an elementary aged child.

 

I like the Hebrew materials put out by Behrman house, but the beginning Hebrew isn't self-teaching (you could learn along though;))

 

Sarah and David is another option. . .

 

Hebrew made easy is a buck 95 and would be self teaching http://www.hebrewmadeeasy.com/

 

Hebrew4Christians.com also has some good resources for Hebrew

 

hope this helps

[ELaurie]

Do you want to learn Modern Hebrew or Biblical Hebrew?

[historymatters]

Are you interested in Modern or Biblical Hebrew? What is the goal?

 

My children have used the materials from Behrman House for 3 and 4 years now; I have learned along with them and use adult BH materials myself successfully. Plus, I label items around the house with their Hebrew counterparts and have Hebrew speaker's music. BH is so incremental that it's easy to learn alongside. However, BH is Modern Hebrew.

I understand that if you learn Modern first (as an English speaker), it's much easier to learn Biblical later. The comparison made are the differences between modern English and the English of Shakespeare; with a little training on the differences and usage, it is fairly simple transition.

 

Though they will be translating Biblical materials starting next year, (Linear Chumash and their Bar/Bat Mitzvah classes), my plan is to officially switch them to a Biblical Hebrew study come High School.

 

I don't know of any children's materials for Biblical Hebrew with a parent who is not a native Hebrew speaker.

 

I don't know if I've helped any:confused:. I do know that Easy Hebrew is a good program, from those in my Synagogue. If you do a search on Hebrew here, you will get much good advice by those who are native speakers; I can only share my positive experiences as a non-native Hebrew speaker learning and teaching children to be able to communicate in Israel and to read Biblical/liturgical materials.

 

Rachel

[Ester Maria]

The website is bad, there is no clear outline of what exactly is taught in which book (and in what grammatical order) and there are no samples to preview.

 

For self-teaching for you and not for the kids, I recommend you to go with any English-based course aimed at adults self-teaching such as Teach yourself series and then switch onto Ivrit min hahatchala, somewhere in the middle of the first book. Ivrit min hahatchala is written almost entirely in Hebrew and it assumes a teacher, it is a little dense (and the second book contains some literature which might be hard), but probably the best resource I saw. Those two books are exactly the kind of a strong basis in Modern Hebrew you need, and then getting used to the Biblical variant is quite easy with minimal paying attention to details. An additional advantage is that Ivrit min hahatchala is a Jewish resource (often used in Jewish schools; in fact there is even a "tzanua" version for the ultra-Orthodox world, I think), and it teaches the language through a mix of secular context, but also Jewish and Israeli history, art, literature, elements of culture, etc. You both get to read Rachel the poetess and Biblical passages, "general" texts about universities, the importance of sleep, body language and whatnot (the kind of texts to insert vocabulary they put into any language textbooks), but also more "Judaic" and "Israeli" texts - about the history of kibbutzim, about upsherin, then at some point you get to compare a Biblical passage with some midrash and a modern poetic version of it, etc. I think it is a really solid pedagogy, especially the second book, so if you can somehow get yourself to the point of having covered the basics to be able to use this book in the first place, that would be great. It is general enough that all can use it (not too "Jewish"), but Jewish enough that it has a real link with the culture and country and it does not teach the dry language in isolation from it.

 

I also warn you that Easy Hebrew is a Messianic (i.e. Christian) text. This may or may not be of any importance to you, but when I glimpsed at their site to see their sequence of topics (which, as I said, I did not find) I noticed it. I personally would not use such materials for "ideological" reasons, but unfortunately I cannot recommend neither for nor against them from a linguistic point of view (i.e. how sound their approach I think is) unless they put a clear, CONCRETE overview of their program online (rather than generalties) with at least some samples.

Edited May 6, 2011 by Ester Maria