Welcome to our Hebrew class!

ברוכים הבאים!

Our Mission: Hebrew For Everyone

What makes this site special and unique is the desire to provide opportunity to learn Hebrew for free for everybody who has a desire to learn. As ambitious as it sounds, learning Hebrew (as well as any other language) should not and will not take fortunes to pay for classes, books, exercises, etc. Yes, it is for free. Yes, it can be done. And, yes, this web site is free and will stay free for everybody.

It's Easy!

I lived in Israel for over a decade, and I can assure you that Hebrew is not complicated at all. In fact, learning Hebrew should be much simpler than learning languages like English, French, Russian, or Finnish. For those readers who knows some Yiddish, I can say, that Hebrew is much simpler than Yiddish too.

Ulpan - אולפן
(literally: studio)
Israeli term for
Hebrew classes.

First of all, we should thank to the unique nature of Semitic (in fact, Semito-Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic) languages. Once you understand the principle, learning new words becomes as simple as building a lego. Also, due to extensive contacts with Indo-European languages (both in ancient and modern era), even classic ancient Hebrew has much more flexible sentence structure than, say, Germanic languages (such as English or Yiddish), and even simpler than another Semitic language, widely spoken - Arabic.

Modern Israeli pronunciation is heavily "Europeanized", and although Hebrew is mother tongue for several million Israelis, still it's not uncommon to meet people with heavy accent on the streets of Israel. Meaning, an accent is not an issue here, for most Israelis you accent will not be an issue.

What It Is, And What It Is Not.

This is definitely not a "learn to speak as Israelis in just 7 days" kind of site. Also, this is not a complete guide to Hebrew right now. The development contunues, and more materials are being added all the time.

We consider the majority of our target audience to be typical American Jews who read Hebrew fluently with really little understanding of what exactly they are reading. From the other hand, some people would like to learn rather conversational Hebrew. And what about children preparing to their Bar- and Bat-Mitzvah?

The site is structured in a form of "Levels" or "Books" covering different aspects of Hebrew learning:

Hebrew 101 - is a collection of explanations about the alphabet and how to read words.
Number is Hebrew - there is a good reason this topic deserves a separate section. For Hebre student it's convenient to have it handy; and discussions on this topic don't really fit into anything else. See, Numbers in Hebrew are quite complicated compared to English, but that's an important topic.
Understand What You Read section will cover "written" Hebrew, both in prayer books and Israeli newspapers. I almost hear many people saying at this point that "modern language is much different than ancient one", but I have my own opinions and approaches to study this amazing language. Thank you. :)
Speak Hebrew - language spoken on the streets of Israel, including common idioms used by everybody, curses and polite language, mass-media and oficial language, "bazaar Hebrew", some army and youth slang, etc.
Articles - this section will cover topics such as What Is כתיב מלא, speak of unique Hebrew history, or discuss differences between official and spoken norms - information which is typically not covered by most classes, but is very useful up to essential to everyone who wants to learn modern language.

Each section is in constant development (until the opposite is announced.) I keep adding lessons to every section every time I feel like it. The goal is to get at the end a whole textbook covering everything related to Hebrew... ambitious goal, isn't it? ;)

By the way, I'll be glad to hear any remarks from anyone who is willing to contribute to this site or make a correction to mistakes I made ('cause nobody is perfect.)

Good Luck and Enjoy the Learning!

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Learn Hebrew @ Virtual Ulpan

Welcome to our Hebrew class!

ברוכים הבאים!