Read Hebrew Today and Wonderfully Wacky Hebrew Alphabet Tricks {Review}

Read Hebrew Today is a flash card learning system by Wholesome Learning's Evonne Mandella. Evonne is funny and spirited and has a passion for teaching. She is a Jewish Christian who loves teaching families to learn to read Hebrew and New Testament Greek words "in minutes" with her "revolutionary easy reading method." According to her, "learning to read a foreign language is a snap!"
I received Read Hebrew Today as a part of my ticket to the Heart of the Matter Online Conference this past summer. I am really glad that I got to hear Evonne speak, because it gave me the encouragement that I needed to continue our study of the Hebrew language.
Hebrew is not so easy to learn. First you have to transliterate the hebrew letters into a hebrew word, and then you have to translate that word into English.
For example, the Hebrew letters that form the word "שלום" is first transliterated as "shalom" and then can be then translated as "hello," "goodbye" or "peace." So, often it is not enough to just know the word, you have to understand the meaning {and sometimes a little about the Hebrew culture to understand how to use the word.}
We can read the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and most vowels. But it does us little good without a large vocabulary. At one point, we quit reading Hebrew and just focused on building our vocabulary. Well, now we can do both! Read Hebrew Today is designed to just that ~ it teaches you how to read while teaching you vocabulary at the same time.
You can check out the samples by clicking on the preview to get a better idea of what I am talking about, but I will try to explain. With Evonne's system, you are taught a letter and the sound that it makes in the context of a word that you are reading. I printed the PDF file on index cards (front and back) and had it bound at the top so that it makes a flip book. I really liked having it bound as a flip tool (less chance of losing the cards and keeps it nice and organized). At first, I thought that if there was one thing that I would change about this tool, it would be that fact that there is no rhyme or reason to the vocabulary words. For example, our first five words were pen, pillow, moth, roof and monkey. I prefer to learn words through common themes like we did when we began learning Hebrew, such as all the names of the members of our family. However, the reason why is because she had to choose words that use every letter in the alphabet, so really the vocabulary is a bonus feature. This makes sense to me because she is teaching you to read every letter of the alphabet in a word. Reminds me of handwriting pretests and the crazy sentences that contain every letter of the alphabet.
Because of this, it really is simple and easy, and you really can read Hebrew today! I also had the chance to check out Evonne's Wonderfully Wacky Hebrew Alphabet Tricks ~ this is really a super silly and fast way to learn your Hebrew alephbet sounds. They are so silly that they work. Some are kind of goofy and we all tried to figure out how she got this or that for a letter, but you want to know what? Even though they were goofy, it worked. Associating the letters with something silly does help you remember them! This book is a perfect accompaniment to Read Hebrew Today, but it can also stand alone if you want to learn the Hebrew Alephbet. {Check out the samples to see more} Read Hebrew Today and Wonderfully Wacky Hebrew Alphabet Tricks are both available through Currclick for $3.99 each. Evonne also has a variety of other Wholesome Learning products available at a reasonable price.
{I received Read Hebrew Today free with my ticket to the HOTM Online Conference. I received a copy of Wonderfully Wacky Hebrew Tricks for free for review. I received no further compensation and I offer my honest opinion. See my disclosure policy for more information.}

2 comments

  1. I might have to look into this, we really enjoy learning Hebrew...Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Thanks for that! We plan on diving into Hebrew in January. (I was planning on December but it looks like a move is coming.)

    Blessings

    Janet

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