When very young children interact with their favorite stories, they embark on an exciting journey of early literacy. They naturally love to pick up books, enthusiastically flip through the pages, point out characters by name, and label the actions happening on each page. Through joyful repetition, like mimicking the sounds of a word or rhythmically naming colors, children rapidly build their vocabulary and develop print awareness. They begin to recognize that the world around them is filled with words, and they master physical skills like directionality, quickly learning to turn an upside-down book so that it is right-side-up.

It’s incredible to watch early literacy in action. These early childhood skills lay the foundations for reading readiness once children are school-aged. Indeed, many school programs build on a spoken language foundation and move quickly to letter-sound (phonics) work because most children already come to school with a robust vocabulary, familiarity with speech and sound patterns (phonology), innate usage of the rhythmic flow of the language (cadence), and grammar.

This is why the claim by Dr. Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist with expertise in reading, language, and learning, in a recent blog on his website highlighted that teaching phonemes (units of sound) as isolated, artificial units without grounding in language can be counterproductive. That is, phonemic tasks must be meaningful and connected to the spoken language learners already have (or are explicitly building). These phonemic awareness lessons should not be reduced to meaningless “sound drills” divorced from letters, vocabulary, and semantics.

But what happens when a child in a Jewish school is learning to read Hebrew as a second language? As Diaspora Jews, almost every educational institution is expected to teach children to read in Hebrew, allowing them access to the texts of our ancestors, to say prayers at the Kotel, or to order off a menu in Tel-Aviv. These expectations create educational challenges, as students must learn to access new texts and navigate unfamiliar words without the built-in spoken-language advantages they rely on in their mother tongue.

When teaching Hebrew to children who did not acquire Hebrew as a first language, the order and focus of early literacy instruction matter. Non-native speakers do not start with the same linguistic foundation of their native peers. Students must first be exposed to the Hebrew language, specifically, with explicit vocabulary and oral language. This could be through explicit instruction in spoken Modern Hebrew or classical vocabulary and phrases from texts being read out loud. (The latter is an expression of oral language necessary for reading when the texts represent a non-spoken language, such as the Siddur.) In addition to this vocabulary and oral language instruction, second language Hebrew learners need explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness—the ability to manipulate and perceive units of language (e.g., words, syllables, phonemes). Seidenberg would say phonemic awareness should be in conjunction with letter instruction (e.g., phonics) but he assumes that students already have the aforementioned vocabulary and oral language of a native speaker, which is not the case for Diaspora students learning Hebrew. Accordingly, beginning with oral language and vocabulary along with explicit and systematic phonological awareness instruction is best for this population. Before phonics instruction with a focus on sound-symbol correspondence, language foundation is critical. This allows phonics instruction to build on familiar sounds from the language students have been explicitly exposed to, mimicking early native language learning.

This highlights the need for critical and creative reflection on the emerging research from the English language world in the Science of Reading. Professor David Share has continued to write and speak about the universal principles of literacy and the particular manifestation of certain principles in various languages, such as Hebrew. Following Science of Reading experts without considering the impact of the unique orthography (spelling system) of Hebrew, second language considerations, and Jewish educational context does not serve our students. Rather, it is necessary to turn to the broader research literature in each of these areas and to those with significant experience reading, synthesizing, and applying them to Jewish schools to advance the Hebrew reading of our second language learners.

While there are myriad examples of the linguistic differences between English and Hebrew, syllable structure is one key distinction. English closed syllables largely follow an onset-rime structure, such as in the word “cat,” for which the /c/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime. In contrast, Hebrew closed syllables follow a body-coda structure, such as in the word “דָג,” where the /da/ is the body and the /g/ is the coda. The implications for initial phonics work connecting sound to symbol, sounding out unfamiliar words, and decoding are significant. Other distinctions include the orthographic depth (the consistency of the relationship between letters and sounds) of Hebrew with vowels compared to English and Hebrew without vowels, syllabic stress during the decoding process, morphology, and more. All are enhanced by oral language and vocabulary exposure and phonological awareness instruction that takes these idiosyncrasies into account and precedes and then continues with phonics instruction.

Based on the research and practice, novice Hebrew learners need foundational oral building blocks. These include:

• High frequency Hebrew vocabulary based on the texts learners are expected to read. Students expected to read the Siddur and Humash should get explicit systematic instruction in their vocabularies (e.g., שֶׁמֶשׁ, יוֹם, לַיְלָה, בָּרוּךְְ). Students expected to read Modern Hebrew should get explicit systematic instruction in those vocabulary words (e.g., פַּרְפַּר, גַן, לוּחַ, יַלְדָּה).
• Multisensory experiences. There is no evidence that making letters out of clay or shaving cream (or similar activities) develop literacy skills, but sorting activities, rhythmic repetition, songs (including tefilot) with gestures, and picture and word matching reinforce and strengthen literacy skills, including comprehension. These activities contribute to the phonological system students will later map to print.
• Phonological awareness at the word level, syllable level, and phoneme level, with blending and segmentation activities for each. These oral blending and segmentation activities might look like the following without visuals (including letters) as noted above:
  • Isolating the coda of “דָג” to /ג/ and the body to /דָ/
  • Isolating the medial sound of “עִפָּרוֹן” to /פָּ/
  • Blending the body /יוֹ/ to the coda /ם/ to get “יוֹם”
• Sound-symbol mapping: Once students can hear and manipulate sounds in familiar words, sound-symbol instruction becomes far more effective. They learn that the ג represents the final sound in דָג, that דָ forms a consonant-vowel unit, and that blending these parts produces a known word. Because they already understand the word, decoding leads directly to comprehension.

This reflects the Simple View of Reading: decoding and language comprehension work together. If oral language is weak, decoding alone will not produce understanding.

The sequencing issue is even more critical for students with dyslexia. Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with accurate and fluent word recognition, typically rooted in weaknesses in phonological processing. While all students benefit from instruction that is explicit, systematic, cumulative, and carefully paced, this is acutely necessary for students with dyslexia. When learners are asked to map letters onto poorly formed or unfamiliar phonological representations, decoding becomes cognitively overwhelming.

For non-native Hebrew learners with dyslexia, two vulnerabilities intersect:

1. Reduced phonological efficiency
2. Limited familiarity with Hebrew oral language and vocabulary

If phonics is introduced before Hebrew phonological representations are stable, these students are likely to resort to rote memorization rather than decoding, undermining long-term fluency.

Explicit instruction in Hebrew phonological awareness, embedded in vocabulary-rich experiences, strengthens the underlying sound system. When phonics is introduced systematically afterward, students with dyslexia have clearer phonological anchors for mapping graphemes (orthographic units) to sounds. This reduces cognitive load and increases the likelihood of accurate, transferable decoding. While all learners benefit from structured literacy principles, students with dyslexia depend on them. For Hebrew instruction, that structure must include deliberate oral language, vocabulary, and phonological instruction, before letter introduction.

It is a common misconception that best practices in literacy instruction transfer seamlessly from one language to another, or that second-language learners should simply mirror the developmental path of native speakers. In reality, every language reflects both universal and particularistic principles. Instruction cannot simply be “plugged in” across languages—particularly when learners do not share the same depth of oral exposure as native speakers.

For non-native Hebrew learners, this distinction is not theoretical. English-based assumptions about onset-rime patterns, stress distribution, and morphological structure, do not automatically prepare students for Hebrew’s root-pattern system or syllabic organization. Nor do phonological skills developed in English fully transfer to a language with different sound patterns, morphological logic, and orthography. Before students are asked to map Hebrew letters to sounds, they must have stable, meaningful Hebrew sounds to map.

Dr. Seidenberg has persuasively argued that phonemic awareness instruction must be grounded in meaningful spoken language rather than treated as isolated sound manipulation. His work, however, focuses on native English speakers learning to read English, children who already possess a well-developed oral language system in the language of instruction. That premise cannot be assumed in second-language Hebrew classrooms. For these learners, the spoken-language foundation is not already in place; it must be deliberately built.

In this context, the sequencing question becomes clearer. The goal is to ensure that systematic sound-symbol instruction does not outpace oral language development. Explicit phonological and phonemic awareness, embedded within rich Hebrew vocabulary, rhythm, and morphology, should establish the groundwork. Phonics can then attach to internalized, meaningful representations, instead of abstract sound fragments.

Such alignment respects both the structure of Hebrew and the realities of second-language acquisition. It acknowledges that instructional models designed for native speakers cannot be automatically transferred to different linguistic contexts. Most importantly, it produces readers who do more than decode Hebrew text: it produces readers who understand and are motivated to use this skill in service of their Jewish identity and participation in Jewish communal, cultural, and religious life.