Hebrew

What kind of Hebrew sets up new readers for success? 

Like Spanish and French and many other languages, Hebrew is a gendered language. Expose students to the nuance and various forms of verbs and adjectives by, as it's actually spoken, advises Dina Maiben, director of the Hebrew program at Gratz College. That will give them a solid starting point.

Maiben explains in our video series about effective Hebrew learning strategies.

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Expose students to the nuance, advises Dina Maiben, director of the Hebrew program at Gratz College

Written by Dr. Jeremy Benstein, "Hebrew Wordshops - A New Way to Connect to Hebrew" explores the potency of the three-letter roots that enrich our connection to Hebrew and Jewish values. 

"To pray" in Hebrew is לְהִתְפַּלֵּל l’hitpalel, a term that actually means "judge, judgment.” This verb and the word for prayer, תְּפִילָּה t’filah, come from the root פ-ל-ל (p-l-l), and words derived from it mean "to be judged" or even "to judge oneself." This is a far cry from our usual ideas of liturgy.

There are actually several different types of Jewish prayer, with a range of Hebrew words that help us express an attitude of gratitude, and more. Judaism traditionally acknowledges four types of prayers: petition (bakashah); penitence (s’lichah); praise (hallel); and thanks (todah).

These prayer words have become super-useful words in secular Israeli Hebrew.

The more often students are exposed to Hebrew and practice using it, the stronger their language skills will be. Here's a simple, quick activity you can use today!

Decoding is the first step in learning to read. Then what?

Beneath the surface prayer program is a rigorous pedagogic structure that has been carefully crafted to home in on specific concepts, skills, and content.

Learning a second language is simply not the same as learning a first language, according to Dina Maiben, director of the Hebrew program at Gratz College.

That’s true for reading as well as learning to speak. Understanding how sounds are combined into words and words into sentences is something that develops over time in early childhood, but once a learner has reached school age, it is likely fully developed. And once mastered, it can easily be applied to a new language. By the time students are in 3^rd grade, they are more than ready developmentally to apply what they understand about phonics to a second language. "For second-language learning, it doesn’t take many years for children to build the oral/aural foundations of a language that are necessary for understanding how print maps onto the sounds of the language, as it would for first language learning," Maiben says.

Hear more from Maiben in our video series abo

Energize your classes this week with a quick, useful activity to learn to say a simple Hebrew greeting

Jeremy Benstein, author of the new book Hebrew Routes, Jewish Routes: A Tribal Language in a Global World discusses the future of Hebrew as the featured guest on The Promised Podcast.

Plain and simple: Students benefit when they learn to decode in tandem with hearing the language. 

Oral language and decoding go hand-in-hand, reinforcing each other, according to Dina Maiben, director of the Hebrew program at Gratz College. Such an approach increases proficiency, decreases frustration, and helps students build on what they know and progress at a smooth pace. 

Hear more from Maiben herself, as part of our video series about effective Hebrew learning strategies.

How can you incorporate oral Hebrew into your program?  

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