L'Shon ha-Kodesh: A Beginning Hebrew Book for Adults is a text designed to teach Hebrew decoding skills to adults. This ten-lesson volume uses an active Jewish Hebrew and siddur vocabulary to give adult learners the tools to be successful Hebrew readers.
Students are carefully introduced to the consonants and vowels of the Hebrew alphabet. The goals include developing the reader's ability to decode Hebrew as well as grounding learners in the broader use of Hebrew in Jewish life, ritual, study, and tradition. Along the journey, students are introduced to root words as well as siddur words and phrases.
Every prayer has a story. When the rabbis of the Talmud wanted to explain what prayer means they told the story of the first time a prayer was said. They would root each prayer in the spiritual history of major Jewish figures.
By knowing these stories, we get a sense of what each prayer should mean to us. By speaking of famous moments that were human breakthroughs with God, we get to look at our own relationship with God.
In this book, Joel Lurie Grishaver presents an introduction to almost every prayer in the siddur and stories that root the prayer in the heart. Here is an original way of looking at the liturgy and unfolding the meaning that is to be found there. Are you a rabbi, an educator, a camp person, a youth group leader, or a Jew who wants to find prayer meaningful?