Student Stories

"I came to Jack thinking I was a complete beginner. He figured out in the first session that I already knew more Hebrew than I thought — 15 years of hearing it from my Israeli wife had actually stuck. He just had to unlock it. The platform flashcards from our actual conversations drill exactly the words I use with my family. Three months in and my wife says I finally sound like a real person, not a textbook."

"Super patient when I mess up pronunciation. The platform remembers exactly where I struggled in lessons and drills me on those specific words. I used Duolingo Hebrew for a year and couldn't hold a conversation. After two months here I ordered food in Hebrew on a trip to Tel Aviv and the waiter didn't switch to English."

"I needed conversational Hebrew for my business trips to Israel. The conversation scenarios in the platform are exactly what I face in meetings. Jack created custom scenarios based on my actual work situations — negotiating terms, scheduling follow-ups, small talk over coffee. My Israeli partners now joke that I sound like I grew up in Raanana."

"I've been going to synagogue for 20 years and following along in the Siddur without really understanding what I was saying. The bridge from my prayer book Hebrew to actual comprehension was exactly what I needed. The Nikud Toggle is genius — it let me gradually wean off the vowels until I could read the Torah portion without training wheels. Last Shabbat I read from the Torah and understood every word. My rabbi noticed."

"Seminary student here. I'd done two semesters of Biblical Hebrew in a classroom and could barely parse a verse. The Root Explorer changed everything — once I saw how one root generates 15 different words, the whole language clicked. I can now prep a sermon in Hebrew in the time it used to take me to look up three words."

"My grandmother spoke Yiddish but my parents didn't pass it on. I tried every resource I could find — the Duolingo course was a mess of mixed dialects, and the only other options were academic textbooks from the 1970s. Jack is literally one of three Yiddish tutors on the entire internet. He knows the difference between Lithuanian, Polish, and Hasidic Yiddish and teaches them properly. I can now read my grandmother's letters. I cried the first time I understood a full paragraph."

"The lesson-to-flashcard pipeline is what sold me. After every session with Jack, the platform automatically creates cards from exactly what we covered. No more forgetting everything by Thursday. My retention went from maybe 30% to closer to 80% once I started doing the daily reviews. It's like having a personal assistant that was listening in on my lesson."

"As a theologian studying Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, I needed a platform that treated these languages seriously — not as a game. The conjugation drills with all 7 binyanim patterns, the Root Explorer showing cross-language connections, and the ability to read actual Biblical texts with a built-in dictionary — this is what seminary should have been. The fact that one person built this from Jerusalem is remarkable."