“Look at that house. Maybe I’ll bayit!”

“The bear dove into the water.”

“Grandma, pinch my cheeks a little savta next time!”

These are just three normal English sentences, right?

Wrong! Although they may sound normal, within each of these sentences is a hidden Hebrew word—one that sounds like an English word with its English translation. For example, in the third sentence, the Hebrew word is savta, which means “grandma” in Hebrew. In context, savta sounds like “softer,” creating a coherent sentence. So we get: “Grandma, pinch my cheeks a little savta next time!” The English word is underlined, and the Hebrew word is italicized.

In my family’s recently published book, May-Ah Teach You 100 Hebrew Words?!, 100 Hebrew words are presented using the same method, along with cute illustrations. With my sisters’ help, the dream of publishing a book actually became a reality. For the past few years, my family has been working together to generate ideas for this book. It began as a fun dinner conversation but eventually turned into how to realistically create the final product.

For years, through our summer camp, URJ Camp George, and youth group, NFTY-NEL, my two older sisters, Carly and Elana, and I heard the same five or 10 sentences to teach us Hebrew. We knew this was a fun way to learn Hebrew words but kept wondering why we only learned the same 10 words year after year. So we took up the challenge of creating our own sentences. From throwing ideas back and forth with our Israeli exchange student and her family to opening a dictionary to a random page and trying to fit a Hebrew word into an English sentence, we slowly doubled, and then tripled, our sentences. Because of our title (the Hebrew word for “100” is may-ah), we needed to reach 100 before this became anything more than just a fun family project. Finally, during an Israel vacation for Passover in 2007, we reached the goal—100 sentences!

After hiring an illustrator, formatting each page exactly right and finding the right publisher, our first copy was delivered to us in March 2009, just three months ago. Now came the difficult part.  It was great that the Fox family had published a book, but how would we sell them? After selling the first dozen to family and friends, I decided that if I truly wanted the book to sell, I would have to learn a bit about marketing. As a result, for my high school senior project, I decided to market my family’s book.

After reading marketing books, learning more about Excel spreadsheets and viral marketing, I decided to make a YouTube video and website. In one minute and 52 seconds, the YouTube video includes a short song, gives three examples from the book and has information about where to buy it. The video (watch it here!) currently has more than 300 hits. The website took two weeks to create and has had 250 visits so far. It includes a quick summary of the book, introduces the compilers (my family) and the illustrator, has book reviews from Amazon.com, sample pages, places the book can be found and ways to contact us with questions or book orders.

Publishing a book has been a great experience. Although it wasn’t always easy and has taken a great deal of work, every time someone in my family sells even one more book, we feel so accomplished and proud that we were able to create a fun way to learn Hebrew words. We never made the book to create a profit; in fact, we would need to sell a lot more before we could even think of the word “profit!” We compiled and published a book simply as a fun family project and to learn a few new things along the way.

Enter to win your very own copy of the brand-new book!

Shani Fox, 17, will be a freshman at the University of Rochester this fall. During high school, she was an active member in synagogue youth group and NFTY-NEL. She and her sisters have attended URJ Camp George in Parry Sound, Ontario, for all 11 years of its existence. She loves visiting her friends in Israel, playing guitar, singing and spending time with her family.