What makes this site special is our commitment to providing free Hebrew learning opportunities for everyone who wishes to learn. As ambitious as it may sound, learning Hebrew—like any other language—should not require a fortune to pay for classes, books, or exercises. Yes, it is completely free. Yes, it can be done. Yes, this website is and will remain free for everyone.

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

First of all, we should thank 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. Additionally, due to extensive contact with Indo-European languages (both in ancient and modern eras), 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 the mother tongue for several million Israelis, it's still not uncommon to meet people with heavy accents on the streets of Israel. This means that an accent is not an issue; for most Israelis, your accent will not matter.

This is definitely not a "learn to speak like an Israeli in just 7 days" type of website. Also, this is not a complete guide to Hebrew right now. The development continues, and more materials are being added all the time.

We consider the majority of our target audience to be American Jews who read Hebrew fluently but with little understanding of what exactly they are reading. On the other hand, some people would like to learn conversational Hebrew. And what about children preparing for their bar or 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.
   
• Numbers in Hebrew - there is good reason this topic deserves a separate section. It's convenient for Hebrew students to have it handy, and discussions on this topic don't really fit into anything else. You see, numbers in Hebrew are quite complicated compared to English, but it's an important topic.
   
• Understand What You Read section will cover "written" Hebrew, both in prayer books and Israeli newspapers. I can 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 studying 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 that is typically not covered in most classes but is essential for everyone who wants to learn the modern language.
  
  

Each section is under constant development (until announced otherwise). I continue adding lessons to each section as I have time and inspiration. The goal is to eventually create a complete textbook covering everything related to Hebrew—an ambitious goal, isn't it?

I would be pleased to receive feedback from anyone willing to contribute to this site or correct any mistakes I've made (since nobody is perfect).

Good luck, and enjoy learning!