Modern Hebrew for Beginners

1. Modern Hebrew for Beginners • Agenda for First Session • 1. A little background information • 2. The Hebrew class • ♦ From the ground up – no prior knowledge assumed • ♦ Detailed notes will be available • ♦ General plan • ▪ First phase – develop a phonetic reading ability • ▪ Thereafter – develop grammar, vocabulary, & conversation • ♦ Practice, practice, practice… [There are excellent tutorials on the web-site • called Hebrew Language at the University of Texas at Austin. The URL • is: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/hebrew/heblang/tutorials.shtml • 3. “Housekeeping” matters related to the class • ♦ Class will be held in the Jewish Home chat room on the Virtual Yeshiva • web-site • ♦ Login URL (for JAVA) is: http://messiahtruth.com/torahchat/logon.html • ♦ Login URL (for previous version of software) is: • http://virtualyeshiva.com/login_x.html • ♦ Class is scheduled on Mondays, 9:00 – 10:00 PM Eastern US Time • ♦ Lessons will start on time, at 9:00 PM sharp! Please try to be punctual. Preliminaries

2. Modern Hebrew for Beginners 3. “Housekeeping” matters related to the class (continued) ♦ A “Blind Copy” e-mail list will be used to communicate information on the class, such as cancellations due to holidays, to those who are registered. ♦ Lesson notes will be uploaded to the whiteboard in the chat room ♦ Notes will be posted at: http://thejewishhome.org/page4.html ♦ Archives of lesson notes and recordings will be available on the same web-page: http://thejewishhome.org/page4.html ♦ Lesson notes are prepared using Microsoft PowerPoint 2003® (11.8169.8172) SP3. If you wish to download the notes from the Jewish Home website and do not have the Microsoft PowerPoint application on your PC, you can download a free PowerPoint Reader from the compressed URL: http://tinyurl.com/v2586. ♦ For the purpose of practicing pronunciation and reading skills there will be a parallel presence on Skype: http://skype.com. If you want to take advantage of this capability, you will need to open a Skype account and add me as a contact. I am using the nickname uri-yosef on Skype. ♦ We will need a couple people to record each lesson just in case the one who normally records it is accidentally disconnected from the chat-room. Preliminaries

3. Modern Hebrew for Beginners 4. As our Hebrew “primer”, here are some (transliterated) basic Hebrew greetings (accented syllable is shown in bold CAPS): ♦ shaLOM – Initial greeting to others, such as “Hello!”, “Peace!” [also used upon departure, such as “Good-bye!”, “So long!”]. The standard response to shaLOM as the initial greeting is shaLOM u’vraCHAH – “Peace and a blessing!”. ♦ BOqer TOV – “Good morning!”. The response is BOqer OR. ♦ Erev TOV – “Good evening!”. The response is also Erev TOV. ♦ LAYlah TOV – “Good night!”. The response is also LAYlah TOV. ♦ lehitraOT – Greeting upon departure, such as “See you!”, “So long!”. The response is also lehitraOT [a literal translation of the German greeting “Auf Wiedersehen!” used in the same circumstances.] ♦ shaBATshaLOM – “Good Sabbath!”. The standard greeting on the Sabbath. The response is shaBATshaLOMu’mevoRACH – “Good and blessed Sabbath!”. ♦ shaVU’aTOV – The standard greeting following the Sabbath and the start of a new week, “Good week!”. The response is shaVU’aTOVu’mevoRACH, “Good and blessed week!”. ♦ bivraCHAH – A common sign-off on written communications, most closely represented by the English “With kind regards” [literally it means “In a blessing”]. Preliminaries