Customer Reviews

Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to gain greater understanding of the Hebrew Prayerbook. This book only assumes that one can pronounce the hebrew letters and all vocabulary is built up step by step. One of the interesting features of this book is the use of actual prayers presented phrase by phrase so a complete understanding of Adon Olam, Ein Kelohanu, Shema, and the Aleinu is possible. This book is for BEGINNERS and is a very useful introduction to Biblical Hebrew.

This book does not require any complicated grammatical prerequisites. You don't have to have headache to cram up the declension and the conjugation of the nouns and verbs. If you just follow the lessons, you will soon be accustomed to the practical Hebrew liturgy. This is a well designed excellent manual for learning Hebrew for the beginners.

I bought both the book and the accompanying tapes.

The book introduces no more than 10 vocabulary words, a grammatical concept, and reading from a prayer. By the time you're finished, you understand basic constructs of Hebrew thought, and several important prayers, including the Sh'ma, the Aleinu, and V'ahavtah.

It presupposes only that you know basic Hebrew pronunciation of the alefbet and vowels.

I really like the book, but I'm disappointed with the tapes, which I would have preferred to have been read by an Israeli speaker. Still, I may be too picky on this aspect, since it's designed to help you with prayer, and not with getting along in Israel. One thing that might help is if the tapes separated the grammar lessons from the prayers. I would be willing to listen to a tape of prayers in the car, just so I could get an idea how they sound, especially if the prayers were chanted.

As a child, I tried to learn and it didn't stay with me. What did stay was a fear that understanding prayerbook Hebrew was something I couldn't do. Well, judging by the excellent reviews, I bought this book. And lesson one made me sigh with relief. I *can* learn this!

Please note that you need to know the Hebrew alphabet but then you can move right along.

This is a good book to begin your study of Biblical/Poetic Hebrew. This book does not use cumbersome latin terminology for parts of speech and grammar, and this book does not assume any previous knowledge of Hebrew, with the exception of undestanding the Hebrew alphabet, pointed vowels, and their associated pronunciations.

Thus, this book is easy to use for anyone who knows the Hebrew alphabet, and can pronounce Hebrew words, but doesn't know what those words mean. If you do not know the Hebrew alphabet with the associated vowels, then I recommend learning them from an online website that gives free tutorials and lessons in the Hebrew Alphabet. If you do a search, you should be able to find a few of these.

I also agree with the other reviewer that this book could be better if there were some cassette tapes or CD's to go with it. Part of learning a language is hearing a language spoken, as well as trying to speak it yourself. They don't call a language a "tongue" for nothing!

After you have a cursory understanding of the Hebrew alphabet and language, this book takes the motivated student a step further in to the world of Hebrew prayer. A wonderful resource, great material.

I'm not all the way through the book but so far it's a good one. It explains the rules of grammer and is easy to understand, a great second level book.

I am using this book in a classroom setting, so it makes it easier with a teachers instruction. I find it very benificial. I like that it has an answer key in the back, so you can check the exercise parts, and a glossery at the end with the sing, and plur. forms.
Highly recommended for classroom use.

This book is truly " Hebrew made easy". As long as one can decode, learning the "parts of speech" so to speak, is reader friendly. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn to read and understand the Hebrew language.

Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way is the best book for this purpose. I have been teaching Hebrew for 30 years and this book is indeed the easiest way to learn to udnerstand the prayers and to be able to follow not just the translation.