Finding an Ulpan

Ulpan is an intensive hebrew course offered at varying levels. For those of you who know absolutely no hebrew, I would highly recommend that you go to a hebrew course in your home country before moving to Israel.

There are two main types of Ulpan, City Uplan and Kibbutz Ulpan

Kibbutz Ulpan

Kibbutz Ulpan allows you to live on a kibbutz for 5 months in ; which you work half the day and learn the other half. Well on kibbutz Ulpan you are provided with accomodations (usually two to a room, and not such nice rooms at that, but they do the trick) and food.

For someone who has made Aliyah alone I would highly recommend starting your journey with a Kibbutz Ulpan as you will meet people from all of the world, many of which have aliyah like you and you will make some great friends.

When picking a kibbutz ulpan you need to decide what your main goal is. If your main goal is to learn hebrew then it will not bother you being on an ulpan without anglos, however, if your main goal is to have fun, you will want to have anglos on your ulpan. When you are at the aliyah center ask what is the population of the ulpan, tourists, olim, and where they are from. I did two kibbutz ulpan and on the first one I was the only anglo after two months. The rest were russians and south americans, I made the decision to stay despite the cultural differences and as a result I was forced to speak hebrew.

My personal recommendation for a good ulpan is Maagan Michael or Hazorea as it has a lot of olim, tourists and are great kibbutzim.

City Ulpan
A city Ulpan is an ulpan that usually starts early in the morning and ends early to mid afternoon. They do not provide accomodations or food. I would only recommend a city ulpan for those who no where they want to live, have a job or have a family.

Remember if you learn hebrew or not is up to you. You can spend a year doing ulpanim and not learn a word of hebrew, or spend five months and come out nearly fluent. You will have to insist that Israelis speak only hebrew to you, sometimes you will even need to argue with them about it. When I was on my first Kibbutz I refused to speak to Israeli's who would not speak hebrew to me.