About Hebrew Workbooks

Hebrew Workbooks publishes Hebrew handwriting workbooks for Jewish schools, chadarim, and families. The first title, My Ksiva Workbook, was written by Menucha Zeligwarger and published in 2022. It teaches all 22 letters of the alef beis in print and ksiva across 82 pages.

My Ksiva Workbook has been in print since August 2022 and carries ISBN 979-8837431661, so a school can look it up independently before committing to anything. Orders and enquiries are handled by the author directly — the person who answers your email is the person who wrote and designed the book.

How the workbook is built

My Ksiva Workbook teaches print and ksiva side by side rather than one after the other. Every letter appears in both forms in the same lesson, with its stroke order numbered and arrowed, so a child learns the shape they read and the shape they write at the same time.

The practice is graded rather than repetitive. A letter starts as a dotted outline to trace, then appears in boxes that give progressively less of the shape, and finally in an empty box with no guide at all. A child who cannot yet form a letter unaided can still finish a row successfully.

Words are cumulative. A word activity only uses letters already taught, so the first word page works with alef and beis alone. Nothing asks a child to write a letter they have not met.

The final forms — chof sofis, mem sofis, noon sofis, fai sofis and tsadik sofis — each get their own unit rather than a footnote beside the base letter, which is how a child meets them in a siddur.

From the author

Menucha Zeligwarger has been teaching for more than twenty years. My Ksiva Workbook is what those years taught her: that a child learns to write Hebrew best when the letter they read and the letter they write arrive in the same lesson, when the support is taken away a little at a time rather than all at once, and when the first word they are asked to write is built only from letters they already know.

Every page was worked out with children in a classroom before it was put into a book.

Get in touch

Schools, teachers, and parents are all welcome to write: hello@hebrewworkbooks.com.