How is Hebrew similar to Arabic?

Good books for building Hebrew vocabulary?

• Years ago in temple I was taught the Hebrew alphabet, but we were never truly taught how to understand or speak Hebrew. I'd like to learn but I don't currently have the time or money to add college courses to my schedule and I know myself well enough to realize that I would never focus enough to force myself through a textbook without outside instruction. Searching in stores, it seems that most "beginner" Hebrew learning books focus solely on the letters while the "intermediate" levels throw full sentences out when I don't even know any vocabulary beyond bits and pieces picked up over years. Does anybody know of any books that are good for building vocabulary so that I might someday move on to teaching myself grammar? I thought I found a perfect book online, which replaces one English word at a time with Hebrew to slowly build vocab with context. However, it uses transliterated Hebrew and not the letters themselves. Are there any books (for any age group) which have a similar idea of building vocabulary over time, rather than completely overwhelming the student with massive blocks of text that can be sounded out but not understood? Here is the link to the book with transliterated Hebrew, in case my explanation was confusing: http://www.amazon.com/Through-Cinderella-Foreign-Language-Slangman/dp/1891888927/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325569978&sr=1-16 Thank you!

• Answer:

  Try the Torah with a Hebrew-English dictionary. You not only learn Hebrew but also what it is to be a Jew.