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by Neal Walters. I first had interest in learning Hebrew in about 1990 when planning to go to Israel. Due to the Desert Storm, the trip was postponed until 1996. So in the late 1980s, how does one go about learning Hebrew in the middle of Oklahoma? There wasn’t any internet yet. I ordered the Foreign Service Institute. These are courses created by the US government, supposedly used to teach military and/or diplomats. The cassette tapes that came with FSI were useful, but the book lacked a lot. It was designed by the government for an instructor to use in a classroom environment, NOT for an individual to use for self study. Even today, I have never gone back to complete that book. Back then, Borders was building it’s first huge book stores in large cities. On a business trip, I visited one, and found a small selection of Hebrew books not normally found in other bookstores. The book that helped me master the alphabet was a “reader” that was full of practice exercises of reading short two to four letter syllables or words. I began learning more and more prayer book Hebrew by attending synagogue. Each week, certain tunes would stick in my mind, and I would go home and try to learn the words. Music and singing definitely helps with the memorization. I used Menahem Mansoor’s “Biblical Hebrew: Step by Step” to get an introduction to Biblical Hebrew. Later a friend taught Biblical Hebrew to a small group using Jacob Weingreen’s “A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew”. This is a very serious book, which we finished a couple of years later, doing one lesson every week or two. To really know Hebrew, one must study both Biblical and Modern. I remember using two short courses that were books that came with 3 or 4 cassette tapes: “Hugo Language Course: Hebrew in Three Months” and also Eliezar Tirkel’s “Every Hebrew”. I found that I liked the Hugo course slightly better, but learned something from each. In 2005, I registered for Hebrew IV and V via an online course offered by Hebrew College in Boston. It used the text “Hebrew From Scratch - Part II” (with 5 CDs available). Even though I audited the course, it was required to submit homework weekly, and meet with our teacher online for about 45 minutes per week. Later, I went on to take other classes, which include an introduction to Aramaic via the Talmud, and classes that required reading Medieval Hebrew (such as aggadic literature). Learning Hebrew can be very rewarding. I still can’t speak it as well as I would like, but the journey is still on going. Teaching Hebrew to others is one or the best ways to continue learning the language. Children and adults both learn Hebrew the fast and easy way with the multimedia Hebrew courses created by Neal Walters. You can see video demos of his courses at http://HebrewResources.com. Get your own unique unique content learn hebrew article here.