Tarbuton - Hebrew - Israel - Culture - Community

There are several places to go in town:

Jewish Academy, Carmel Valley: Yoni Carr, 760-631-0802, yonic@cox.net - http://www.israelidancing.com/

Hillcrest Area: 30th and Adams - http://www.dancewithdalya.com/

Moms read 3 stories in Hebrew each week. (You don’t need to know Hebrew, but need to know we will be speaking in Hebrew.) Books are for pre-school age, 10-12 pages. 

Meets in Carmel Valley the 2nd and 4th Wednesday each month at 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm.  Descriptions of the books are e-mailed so English speakers can prepare their children.  English speakers can expect to pick up a few Hebrew words each time.  Books will be read again in subsequent meetings for repetition. 

Includes songs and a coloring/sticker project as well.  Use the link to join the Yahoo group for meeting times and reminders of the books.

Join the group for reminders, etc. at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saprili/

Learn the aleph bet with fun cartoons and silly things to help you remember the letters.  http://www.cartoonhebrew.com

 

I actually saw this in use in a K class at the Jewish Academy here in town during my tour and was impressed.  A fun way to teach kids vocabulary using the computer. 

http://www.zigzagworld.com/hebrewforme/ 

They have a graphic literally of various scenes like the breakfast table, the classroom, etc. and the words for various items you can put in the room.  You drag the word over to the room and it puts the graphic of the item in the picture.  Pretty cute. 

My favorite site for news in Hebrew is Walla.  The Hebrew site is at: http://www.walla.co.il/ .  They have pretty good radio stations too - if you want to listen to music in Hebrew but make your selections from an English menu go here: http://radio.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=index.english&fg=1

This site has some wonderful games for kids learning Hebrew; Hang Man in Hebrew, Trivia quizes, a word search in Hebrew (covering lots of easy vocabulary for kids). http://www.j.co.il - make a point to try the word search in Hebrew.  Its very cool.

There’s a songbook that let’s you print some popular songs and prayers - the words in Hebrew.  Some songs are secular Israeli, others are holiday oriented.  http://www.j.co.il/songs/index.asp

There’s a fun application too that let’s you create a banner in Hebrew and allows you to use a variety of nice Hebrew fonts.  http://www.j.co.il/signmaker/index.asp

 

 

This site is a terrific news site for Israel, they offer an English version and a Hebrew version.  http://www.ynetnews.com/ and http://www.ynet.co.il/

Its great practice to read the Hebrew version, and then flip over to the English when you don’t understand something.  The company has a great product too called the Megaphone run by Collactive at this address: http://my.ynet.co.il/collative/ 

The idea behind the Megaphone is that you get desktop delivery of hot news, and a way to proactively respond to legislators, etc. about the news.  Its a really powerful community tool.  

This site has an interesting set of categories of words you can learn including some critical phrases for the adult who has some knowledge but needs to fill in some vocabulary.  For example, there is a section on business terminology (like market size, revenue, etc.) and economics. 

http://www.learn-hebrew.co.il/ 

The site is well done with a blox that lets you click on the word to hear its pronunciation and phoenetic as well as hebrew spellings are visible.  The author has done a variety of other interesting sites for English and Spanish too.  Its worth checking out in the About section.

Another one of his that is great is for Hebrew verbs: http://www.hebrew-verbs.co.il

What I love about the verb site is it conjugates the verb for you and also lets you hear the conjugated variations.   

I came into contact originally with Professor Zev bar-Lev, SDSU, and his colleague Alana Shuster when I was hunting for hebrew teachers for the Ivrit B’Ivrit program we started in Carmel Valley for our pre-school kids.  They have a rather unique method of teaching language. 

Since then, I’ve received e-mails in transliterated hebrew from several people enrolled in the program.  I’m really impressed with the progress of the adults who are taking these classes and all I can say is Kol Ha Kavod to the instructors and the participants.  Its really a wonderful thing. 

For those reasons, while I don’t have personal experience with either the instructors or the classes I recommend this Ulpan if you want to learn Hebrew and are living in San Diego and you don’t mind a rather unusual but seemingly effective approach.

Go here for the details: http://www.languagebazaar.com/

This is the classic "Barnes & Noble" like bookstore in Israel.  There is a branch in the US and you can order online from them.  They seem to be generally higher priced than Sifrutake where I do most of my shopping.  But, its another option for books, CDs, DVDs and the like.

http://www.stmus.com/prod/index.php?cPath=12&osCsid=0c54ee509c171994ea3fdc0eac927ae5 

For most books they do provide the cover image and then a page that you can read to get a sense of the book.  I really like that - as otherwise you’re really guessing if the book is age appropriate or fun.  

This site on the whole has religious texts, religious topics, etc.  So, it wouldn’t be my first choice for secular hebrew books.  But, there are some good choices here so I’ll list the pages that are relevant. 

There are some good selections of Dr. Seuss in Ivrit here: http://www.nehora.com/category.cfm?Category=81

Bugs Bunny and Friends in Ivrit: http://www.nehora.com/category.cfm?Category=108