Following the News

I mentioned in a previous post the potential usefulness of following news outlets in Hebrew on something like Twitter or an RSS reader like Google Reader (both of which I use). Now, this is something that’s up to your own discretion, since any number of groups have Twitter accounts to follow or RSS feeds on their website, but just to give you an idea of what’s out there, I thought I would show a little bit of what I follow personally.

On Twitter, I follow a few, ranging from the newspaper Haaretz to the LGBT news and resource site GoGay, which post only in Hebrew. Search for your preferred newspaper or resource, and see if they tweet. It’s becoming more and more common!

On Google Reader, I subscribe to Haaretz’s “Foreign News” feed. They have a twelve different feeds you can follow, including news, sports, and politics, to name a few. Try out one or two to see which might be the most relevant and interesting for you. I was interested in several of them, but to be honest, all the others post WAY too often for me to be able to stay caught up, and it became too overwhelming. Like on Twitter, other news outlets and websites have RSS feeds as well, and it’s just up to you to decide which ones are the most helpful for you.

Kol Israel

One of the first resources I found for listening to Hebrew online was Kol Israel, the “Voice of Israel”.  It operates as a division of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, and broadcasts over several channels in a number of languages.  The main stations you’ll probably be interested in are Reshet Aleph (talk and cultural programming), Reshet Bet (news, current affairs, and sports), and Reshet Gimel (Israeli music).  Regardless of the station you’re listening to, they play 5ish minutes of the news every hour on the hour.  The repetitive nature of this particular feature can be helpful to you as a learner, since you’ll be hearing some of the same words and material repeated.  From the main site, you can also watch Israeli news broadcasts.

As usual, a word of caution: these stations are not for the beginning learner.  This is real radio, and the Hebrew being spoken is at a normal (i.e. fast) pace.  If you’re anything but advanced, you most likely won’t be able to understand a lot of what’s going on, but it’s still useful to listen to, if only to get used to the way Israelis speak normally.

Israeli dailies

To follow up on the last post, you may be looking for something a bit more challenging than “the only weekly newspaper in easy Hebrew.”  If that’s the case, I thought I’d also provide some links to a few regular Israeli daily newspapers.  There’s not much I can add as an evaluation of them; pick one, skim a few, it’s your call.  Your choices will probably rely a lot more on your personal politics, the subjects you’re interested in, and just personal preferences.

Haaretz:  usually seen to be a bit more intellectual, and leftist, than the others.  Things to be aware of, politically: it’s been described as “Israel’s most vehemently anti-settlement daily paper.”  Expect to find all the usual news items, plus a weekly book supplement on Wednesdays.   (for the English site, go here)

Yediot Aharonot: the most widely-circulated Israeli daily paper, seen to be rather less intellectual than Haaretz, but also more varied politically.  (English site here)

Maariv: the second-most widely-circulated Israeli daily paper; has all the usual features, including a larger Friday (i.e. end of the week) supplement featuring more in-depth political analysis/commentary, book reviews, etc. (no English site, at least that I can find)

Israel HaYom: a relatively new (as of 2007) daily paper, the notable thing about this one is that the print edition is free.  While that probably doesn’t have a huge impact on y’all right now (since I assume you’re not in Israel at the moment), it’s something to keep in mind if you ever head that way.  Like the others, it has an online edition, but unlike the others, it’s a digital copy, which is to say, you click a link to take you to the full paper that you can flip through like a physical newspaper, rather than clicking links to particular articles.  It claims to be unbiased politically, but some do say that it leans to the right. (this one has an English site, but it’s not too useful, since it just directs you to the same Hebrew digital copy as the Hebrew site)

Sha’ar La’Matchil

A couple years ago, I spent a few summer months studying in Israel, first at a yeshiva of sorts in southern Jerusalem, and then in an ulpan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Studying at the ulpan had a pretty sizeable impact on my Hebrew skills, and one of the resources we used in the class was a newspaper, Sha’ar La’Matchil, published weekly by the Israeli Ministry of Education, that provides the news in simplified Hebrew.

While the paper isn’t the length of a regular newspaper, the material covered is comparable.  There are sections for politics, current events, sports, etc, as well as sections special to this paper, including a page that shows the news from 60 years ago, sort of a “This day in ___”.  The main appeal of Sha’ar La’Matchil for the Hebrew learner is not only the simplified language, but also the use of nikkud (vowel markings).  One word of caution, though: just because the language is simplified, and the paper calls itself “The only weekly newspaper in easy Hebrew”, don’t assume that you’ll know all of the words; you *will* still need to use a dictionary for a lot of these words, but you can still count on it to be a bit simpler than the normal Israeli dailies.

One last important note, Sha’ar La’Matchil is NOT FREE, sadly.  If you go to the main website, you can buy a weekly subscription to the paper, either as a physical paper or as the digital online edition.  However, there is always a free sample of a few full editions of the paper, which is what I have linked to above.  The best thing to do is probably to check out the free version, see if it actually helps you, if you think you’ll use it, and think about buying a subscription.