Back in 1994, I first began to learn Hebrew. Most books were just too difficult; for example, I ordered the “Foreign Service Institute” course. It taught the entire alphabet on one page, then jumped into complex lessons with no vowels.
After many months of searching, I finally found a Hebrew “primer” or reading book that taught the basic Hebrew reading skills at more reasonable pace. These books are even simpler than the old “See Spot Run” books. They teach one or two letters per chapter, and then each chapter adds one or two additional letters.
In this style, I was able to work through the book, and finally learned to read Hebrew. However, the downside of a book is that it had now way to pronounce the word audibly for me. I was left to my own guess of what the pronunciation should be.
Thus, I was left wanting more. If you are lucky to have a personal Hebrew tutor, then they can hear you pronounce a word or phrase, then they can correct any mistakes you make. But not everyone has the luxury of their own private Hebrew teacher. As a computer programmer, I thought that it would be be so much better to have a computer tutorial that would show the words, then let you try to pronounce them. After that, you would be able to click on the word, to confirm if you had pronunced it correctly or not. And thus, “At Home with Hebrew” was born.
It was a challenge finding the Hebrew true-type fonts back then, but there were several multimedia software programs emerging on the market, and I chose one called “Toolbook”. It creates online “books” with a turn-the-page model. The teacher (or programmer) creates the pages or lessons, and the program presents the pages to the student. Of course, the student can skip around, and doesnt’ have to go through the lessons in any specific order.
Part of creating the program was to choose the hundreds of exercises. Another challenging part was finding a good quality microphone, and creating and editing over 2700 voice files. My fingers were almost raw from looking up so many words in a Hebrew dictionary.
The final work invovled creating a professional CD/ROM with a nice jacket insert. The program evolved from being sold on diskettes (remember those?) with no sound, to a CD/ROM with over 2700 sound files. Each year since then, via internet marketing only, we have sold hundreds and hundreds of the tutorial.
Creating my first published software tutorial “At Home with Hebrew” was a challenge and a labor of love. It was not an immediate financial success, but I learned a lot, and it introduced me to the world of internet marketing. After the first program, I went on to create two additional Hebrew tutorials and created a successful website marketing dozens of other peoples products.