Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew

I just started studying this book today (Sunday, May 29, 2016)and I'm on chapter five already, which is a little over halfway through the alphabet. Thus far this book has made learning Hebrew far easier than I ever imagined by building on the aleph bet a few letters at a time. I will try to remember to update my review as I finish to give a full account of my learning experience. Thus far I'm extremely happy and very excited to be one step closer to learning a new language. THANK YOU! UPDATE, MAY 31, 2016: I finished this book last night and was able to transliterate the Kaddish prayer included at the end with almost no effort. If you want to learn how to read and pronounce Hebrew I cannot recommend this book enough! It does not teach any grammar beyond explaining why some of the marks are not pronounced because they are for grammatical purposes and not pronunciation. Though it is not a dictionary, it also teaches some popular words in Hebrew, such as camel, succot, shabbat, etc. It is very much worth the time, money and effort to use this book. The lessons build on each other as you learn, and do so well. I am purchasing these for other people to learn or refresh their own ability to read/speak this beautifully powerful language. Note : I devoted the majority of my time over two days learning this, which may not be feasible for people who do not have as much free time to devote to study as I do, so others may not necessarily be able to accomplish learning it that quickly, but I had a competition within myself to see if I could, as someone who was unable to read any Hebrew at all, learn to read it within 24-48 hours, and I did. Anyone else who is attentive, patient and diligent should be able to get through this book quickly.

Amazing little book! Barely half-way through, I was able to read and pronounce real Hebrew words! Of course, the language vocabulary in itself has to be learned separately. But this is a real start at learning to read and write Hebrew. The book is beautifully done and easy to follow. At later times, I would find out that the actual pronunciation of some words were different than how I had thought them to sound while learning them - the point being though, I was now able to make real sense of real letters or words and also to read and write them out! In times past, I used to look at the Hebrew alphabets in despair, wondering how and if I was ever going to understand the language. If I had a word which I wanted to learn presented somewhere, I used to try hard to memorize the "pictures" the word makes, to be able to recognize it later on - and was almost convinced anyone who could actually read the letters of that or any Hebrew word must have been endowed with very extraordinary and special abilities! After just some chapters in this book, I could already discern various word settings and my overall feel for the language was greatly improved. As presented in this very neat book, I believe anyone can be up and running much more steadily in a short period of time. For someone just beginning to learn Hebrew, I most highly recommend it!

Good book to teach yourself or others to read Hebrew.

I have only gotten through the first chapter, but the way the lesson is organised is really working for me, especially as I bought the audio from Audible (on Amazon). I would never have guessed that I could actually learn to read Hebrew, but with this program, I am actually making progress. Was recommended by a friend.

For the goyim, this is a great place to jump into the world of written Hebrew. It will teach you how to recognize and read Hebrew words easily, within a matter of days. I have had this book for over two years now, and though it is only a basic primer and workbook I still use it often for reference. It even includes an excerpt from a Hebrew prayer book, making the jump from a mechanical understanding of the words to a personal understand of the language a bit more palatable. While it has practical uses, it does not give the calligraphy strokes for writing in proper (or ancient) Hebrew. It also fails to go beyond letters and vowels, into definitions, proper sentence structure or composition. As I said, this is just a basic primer. Still, for the price it's wonderful.

I bought this book solely based on the reviews here on Amazon, and boy, was I thoroughly impressed. This is the best primer for any language I have ever seen. It's structured on teaching you how to read each Hebrew letter, with the advantage that Hebrew letters are always pronounced the same way, and the rules are very easy to grasp. I found myself learning the 3 or 4 letters introduced in each chapter very quickly, and after the initial hurdle of unfamiliarity with a completely different alphabet, I was easily recognizing them and keeping them straight in my mind. I can now passably read Hebrew even if I have no clue what most of the words mean. So, to summarize, this book introduces the Hebrew alphabet and teaches you how to read Hebrew script, as well as write it. It does not go into vocabulary or meanings, except for a few words introduced as examples in the different chapters. Each chapter focuses on 3 or 4 letters, and also introduces one of the vowel sounds and how they are indicated in writing. I was recognizing the letters and reading them (even though I have no idea what I'm reading yet) within days. Less than a week. I'll continue practicing using the exercises in this book, and also grab a Tanakh and start reading for practice. My next step will be to start building a decent vocabulary. I could not possibly be any happier with this book.

This is an excellent book for beginning Hebrew. This is actually the book my Rabbi uses to get people started.

Great book. We are enjoying it and learning g so much

Fantástico pero debes comprar el audiolibro también. Lo venden en Audible y no es caro. Vale mucho la pena.

A really fine method of getting the basics of Hebrew. The book starts off at a sensibly easy stage with basic letters and meanings, and lessons on learning how to write the letters. Each lesson leads the reader on carefully. If one sticks to the instructions in each lesson and knows it fully before moving on to the next, the end result is inevitable: The reader has a solid foundation to move on to a higher levels. What I thought was a brilliant idea is the leaving out of technicalities and grammatical fine points. All that can come later. This book is a great first step in learning Hebrew.

excellent for beginners to learn hebrew.

Excellent!