Jacob Wiseberg

I built and shipped a small side project this week: Mehonat Khativa (מכונת כתיבה — “typewriter” in Hebrew), a free, no-login web app for learning to type common Hebrew words.

Why

Typing Hebrew on a standard keyboard means learning a layout, not just a vocabulary. Most resources teach you the words; almost none teach you where the letters actually sit on the keys. I wanted something that did both at once: show a common word, let you type it, and have it drill the standard Israeli keyboard layout into muscle memory along the way.

What it does

• Shows one of the 500 most common Hebrew words at a time, with its transliteration and English meaning underneath, shuffled so you get real coverage instead of always starting from the easiest word.
• An on-screen keyboard laid out like the real Israeli PC layout, so tapping teaches the actual key positions. On desktop it’s on by default; on a phone it’s off by default so you can use your device’s own Hebrew keyboard instead.
• Live feedback as you type, accuracy and speed tracked locally in your browser — no accounts, no cookies, no backend at all.

How it’s built

Deliberately boring on purpose: plain HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript, zero build step, zero dependencies. It’s a static site, deployed as a git submodule alongside this Hugo site, so publishing an update here is one git submodule update away from publishing an update there too.

Try it at wiseberg.net/mehonat-khativa. The word list comes from openhebrew.net’s frequency data — if 500 words isn’t enough for you, that’s where to go for more.