Back in 1994, I first began to learn Hebrew. Most books were just too difficult; for example, I ordered the “Foreign Service Institute” course. It taught the entire alphabet on one page, then jumped into complex lessons with no vowels.
After many months of searching, I finally found a Hebrew “primer” or reading book that taught the basic Hebrew reading skills at more reasonable pace. These books are even simpler than the old “See Spot Run” books. They teach one or two letters per chapter, and then each chapter adds one or two additional letters.
Using this methodology, I finally got to where I could read Hebrew words “on site”. Then I could make out words in the course book, the Sidur, or the Hebrew Bible and finally be able to pronounce them, even if I didn’t know what they meant. As a beginner though, I didn’t always know if my pronunciation was correct or not.
Thus, I was left wanting more. If you are lucky to have a personal Hebrew tutor, then they can hear you pronounce a word or phrase, then they can correct any mistakes you make. But not everyone has the luxury of their own private Hebrew teacher. As a computer programmer, I thought that it would be be so much better to have a computer tutorial that would show the words, then let you try to pronounce them. After that, you would be able to click on the word, to confirm if you had pronunced it correctly or not. And thus, “At Home with Hebrew” was born.
A friend of mine helped me with the Hebrew fonts, and suggested a multimedia book-oriented tutorial program called “Toolbook”. I purchased and learned Toolbook, and slowly began to write my own Hebrew tutorial program. It was a big challenge and very time consuming. It probably took over two full years to get the product in the format that it is today.
One of the challenges was deciding the order in which to teach the Hebrew letters and vowels. Another challenge was just the shear volume of words that had to be keyed in the computer. There was no easy Hebrew word processor, so the data entry was a big challenge. The final challenge, was recording over 2700 Hebrew word and sound files, so that program would be able to pronounce each and every word.
The final work invovled creating a professional CD/ROM with a nice jacket insert. The program evolved from being sold on diskettes (remember those?) with no sound, to a CD/ROM with over 2700 sound files. Each year since then, via internet marketing only, we have sold hundreds and hundreds of the tutorial.
“At Home with Hebrew” was a true labor of love. I invested almost two years of my evenings putting it together. It also helped me to become a success entrepreneur, learning about marketing on the world wide web.
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