One of the questions I hear most often is: How do you actually learn to read Hebrew?
If you’ve tried before and found it frustrating, slow, or downright discouraging, you’re not imagining things. Learning the Aleph Bet can be genuinely hard – especially if you’re dyslexic, neurodivergent, or learning Hebrew as an adult without a classroom structure.
In this video, I walk through the Hebrew reading resources I’ve found most helpful over the years – both for myself and for the people I’ve supported through the conversion process. I share what worked, what didn’t stick, and why some methods are better for accountability while others are better for long-term retention.
Here are the books mentioned:
- Learn to Read Hebrew in 6 Weeks by Shaffier
- National Jewish Outreach Project Hebrew Crash Course
- Learn Hebrew Today by Yedwab
- Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew by Simon and Anderson
If you’re struggling to stay consistent with Hebrew – or with other Jewish practices – you don’t have to figure that out alone. Inside my membership Bayit Builders, we work on skills like this with structure, community, and real support. Doors open to new members January 11–15, 2026.
Transcript below.
Transcript:
One of the most common questions I get is, ” how do you learn the Aleph Bet in Hebrew?” Reading hebrew is hard.
It can really suck to learn, especially if you have problems like dyslexia or otherwise neurodivergent.
So here are the resources that I have found most useful for myself and for my students. Hi, I’m Kochava. I’m a Jewish convert and I have been helping people convert to Judaism since 2010 through my blog, Building a Jewish Life.com.
My first recommendation is the National Jewish Outreach Project. This is usually an in-person class, although I’m sure they must have Zoom versions of this by now. I’m just old and remembering to what I did 15 years ago. This was my first exposure to the Hebrew language.
And it was really great because I had people. I had a class, I had to show up on times. There was so much accountability to make sure that I actually did learn, but unfortunately, it didn’t stick very well because I wasn’t good at practicing it. I took a very long time to convert. So a few years later, I did what I find to be the other most common resource: Learn Hebrew Today by, um, Yedwab, Y-E-D-W-A-B. And all these books will be linked down in the description below. It’s pretty self-explanatory.
You’re just learning to read. Um, one limitation I feel like in this book is you don’t learn how to write, but that’s kind of a limitation of all these books.
If you found a good book for teaching writing, definitely tell me down in the comments below. The second most common resource I find is Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew. Um, and this is by who?
It just says EKS publishing company. Oh, wait, by Simon and Anderson. So this is kind of a heftier version of that book that I just showed you. It’s gonna be kind of the same where you’re doing reading practice, but you’re gonna get to much longer sections that you can practice on.
One exercise that I do really like in this book that I don’t see in the other ones is to “write the following English words with Hebrew letters. If possible, spell more than one way,” and then it gives words like “seed,” “date,” “let,” “Niece.” And I think that’s really useful.
And this book does teach you to write, but it teaches you to write block Hebrew, which is the printed form of Hebrew. There is a printed form and a handwritten form, and the printed is what you see on menus, in books. It’s not what people actually write with their hands.
Probably the closest example, is that everyone writes in cursive. So I feel like it’s a limitation of this book that they’re teaching you the block letters to write when you will never write that out unless you are a teacher of young children.
And then the last book, which is actually my best recommendation. I do like the NJOP for the in-person aspect, for the accountability to make sure you actually finish the book. But this book, I think works the best.
So Learn to Read Hebrew in Six Weeks. This actually started from Periscope. Do you even remember Periscope? So this author was doing Periscope classes, um, in 2020, and this grew out of it. And the way that she teaches things is through pictures. So I really like the Gimel one, so I’ll show you that. So you have your picture here of a guy doing golf.
Gimel for G and you start to remember, oh, there’s a guy playing golf and that’s the golf club. And so you can remember that that letter, that one is G. And so I feel like this book is an amazing resource. I only found it by accident. I just requested all of the learn Hebrew books from my local library system ’cause I knew I was going to be doing a video like this eventually. And I have to say I’m extremely pleased with it.
Five Stars. Well done, author. Oh, and this is by Miko Shair Sh Shafi, I don’t know. S-H-A-F-F-I-E-R.
So there you have it.
If you’re struggling with learning to read Hebrew and these other Jewish practices, and especially if you’re having a hard time with accountability and community around them, I have a membership called Bayit Builders. This is exactly the kind of things we do: we support each other through practices like this.
And Bayit Builders only opens to new members three times a year, and it just so happens that the next time is January 11th through 15th, 2026. I’ll put a link down in the description below so that you can find out more.
Hatzlacha (Good luck) on your new endeavor.
