I first began to learn Hebrew in 1994 before the internet was really popular.  Even then Borders and Barnes and Noble stores were just starting, so it was hard to find good tutorials.  Most courses simply jumped into Hebrew sentences, without taking the time to properly learn the alphabet first.

Finally, I found an exercise book that was dedicated to just teaching a person to read the Hebrew letters. This book would teach one letter, and a few vowels in the first chapter.  The second chapter would follow-up with the same letter, and add another letter and another vowel or two.  In Hebrew, the vowels are written below or above the Hebrew letters, and they are called Nikud.

Using this system, I was able to master "site reading" of Hebrew.  In other words, even if I didn't understand the words I was reading, I could sound-out each word in the Sidur (prayer book) or the Hebrew Bible, or a Hebrew lesson book. The only problem was, sometimes I was still guessing and didn't have anyone to confirm if my new reading abilities were correct or not.

So even these "readers" were lacking.  If I only had my own personal Hebrew tutor working with me, then I could have learned even faster.  Since I was a computer software developer, I knew that the computer could take the place of the tutor, and pronounce the words for me.

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.

Finally, the art work came together, and the progam changed from three diskettes (you don't see those much any more) to a CD/ROM.  I learned Microsoft Frontpage and began selling the program online, back when the world wide web was just in its infancy.  After 10 years, I have literrally sold 100s of the program.

"At Home with Hebrew" was a true labor of love.  I invested almost two years of my evenings putting it together.  It also helped me to become a success entrepreneur, learning about marketing on the world wide web.