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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for self study if disciplined (get answer book)
Review: I shopped around for a number of texts to pursue self-study of hebrew with the goal of being able to read (with dictionary assistance) biblical texts and understand prayerbook liturgy. This text - with the answer book which is a separate purchase - is what worked for me.
The approach is to cover the grammer at a high level to allow an over-all translation competence at the end of the book, while blurring some of the fine points (especially the patterns of vowel changes). This has worked well for me. It is necessary to do all of the exercises to make this work, altho I have skipped the english-to-hebrew exercises, since I'm only interested in translation. I also found it necessary to buy the accompanying set of flashcards to drill myself on the vocabulary constantly. I've taken about a year to go through this in my (little) spare time, but I'm almost done and I'm impressed by how much I am able to read.
When done, I'll go on to studying individual texts with dictionary and more advanced grammers for reference as issues arise.
If you are self motivated to learn to read biblical hebrew and are willing to spend a bit more for accessories (answer book and flash cards) this is the best self-education system I found - and I bought at least 3 other "introductory" grammers.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't forget to buy the answer book!
Review: I would like to remind all potential buyers that the Hebrew Primer will be useless to you unless you also buy the anwer book. The answer book is indispensable since:-the amount of exercises in this manual is huge
-the difficulty of these exercises is real
Rating:
Summary: Best Intro Text I've found
Review: I'm currently teaching Intro Hebrew and have looked at a number of books on this topic. This Primer is the best text for this purpose that I've found by a long shot. Lessons are well arranged and, though simple, are not simplistic. Students have the opportunity to progress at a very high rate. The selection of vocabulary is wonderful with every word being a high-frequency word in the Hebrew Scriptures. The downfalls of this text are: 1) use of non-standard terms for grammatical features of the language - this is both a positive and a negative: positive in that it keeps the intimidation factor down for new students; negative in that for those students who go on from this book (and I suggest many will want to do so) need to learn the standard terms used by nearly every other grammar and text. 2) that's it; no other real downfalls. For what this text purports to be (A First Hebrew Primer) it succeeds magnificently! This book will not leave the student proficient, but that's not its purpose. My wife learned Hebrew by using Seow's Grammar for Biblical Hebrew - a great intro grammar, but horrible as an intro text. She can tell you about the minutiae of Hebrew, but has no love for it. I learned using the Primer and have seen many others who have learned by using it. The common factor is that a high-percentage of us now LOVE Hebrew, and couldn't wait to learn more about the finer points found in Seow.
Rating:
Summary: The best book for complete beginners!
Review: If you must learn Biblical Hebrew in your college, grad school or seminary, and you are a complete beginner, and the "intro" course there does not use this book (investigate!), heed my warning: WORK COMPLETELY THROUGH THIS BOOK BEFORE YOU TAKE THAT COURSE! You can do it in a quarter or semester if you're disciplined enough, especially (as another reviewer says below) in a study group. Your sanity will thank you as you help the classmates who are writhing in agony around you. I have yet to find another "Hebrew Primer" for adults that effectively helps the complete beginner. This book is not college-level, and it won't enable you to "test out" of Hebrew Intro, but it wasn't designed for that. College (or higher) level introductory Biblical Hebrew will be manageable AFTER you finish this book.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book for Hebrew self-instruction
Review: Studying Hebrew can be a terrifying prospect for seminary students, and because many of the textbooks (such as Kelley, Weingreen, Mansour) are so inaccessible, lots of young pastors immediately forget most of what they learned. "The First Hebrew Primer" offers Hehrew without tears. Students who use this book (and it is used in many seminaries, but not enough) will learn easily and without pain. The book assumes students don't know the alphabet, then goes from there. Each day's work builds easily on the day before. If for each chapter one spends an hour with flashcards and two hours doing some of the exercises, one should have no trouble at all earning an A. The book has a whole year of Hebrew in a one semester textbook. The trick is leaving out a lot of the explanations for the many exceptions in Hebrew (often rare). The result is very fast progress. With every lesson the Hebrew Bible opens wider. In ten class periods my class was reading through Genesis, haltingly, but recognizing 50% to 75% of the words. By semester's end . . . reading just about anything with the help of a dictionary here and there. One could go through this by oneself, but it really is easier in a class. It's nice to have a teacher to answer questions and force one to prepare for a quiz. It's worth the tuition fee to have that help. But the nicest thing is that it's such an easy book to use that students don't feel their brains have frozen, leaving them unable to comprehend anything else. The person below who complained of gutterals not being called gutterals will be happy to hear that has changed, though if one isn't careful, one can learn about constructs, waw-consecutives, and various tenses without learning what they're called. A minor problem. It's true that one might like more examples from the Bible to translate, but when it comes down to it, we all have the Bibles anyway, so why not sinply turn to the source? Someone earning a Ph.D. in Hebrew would want something more detailed, perhaps, but when it comes down to it relatively few scholarly papers dealing with Hebrew actually require that level of expertise. Even the experts tend to turn to Hebrew grammars when they're working on that level.
Rating: 
Summary: A complete but dry intro to BH
Review: The Hebrew Primer published by EKS is a manual that will take you deep into the Hebrew language if you have the courage and patience to go through its endless exercises and can bear with its dry, impersonal tone. It covers both elementary and intermediate Hebrew and in this respect is more advanced that its rival on the market, Hebrew Step by Step by Mansoor. Each lesson begins with a series of (non Biblical)sentences that include the points of grammar of the preceding lesson followed by a short list of new words. Then comes the grammatical theory. The lesson proceeds with an impressive (and sometimes overwhelming)array of exercises, all with non Biblical sentences, followed by an extract of the Book of Ruth and a folk tale from the Western tradition(in Hebrew of course). The book is large with a big Hebrew font, which makes it the most visually appealing although it lacks illustrations.(The format makes for easy reading but not for easy transportation outside your deskroom. One of the reasons why I ended up buying Mansoor's manual was because I wanted to study Hebrew anywhere and its small format was what I needed.) The material contained in one lesson is really elephantine, specially toward the end of the book, but the strategy of HP is just that: help you to memorize through constant repetition. The main advantage of the Hebrew Primer(HP)is its very thorough and clear coverage of the verb forms, a domain in which it undoubtedly beats HSBS, which is shoddy and superficial in its treatment of this vital aspect of Hebrew grammar. Not only does HP explain the verbs and their modifications very well, it also gives you plenty of examples of the verb form under consideration in the exercises that follow the grammatical theory. In addition, there are huge charts with all the verb forms(imperfect, perfect, participle, imperative, infinitive and participles)at the end of the book. What more could a serious Hebrew student desire? And the same applies to the nouns: there are charts for the plural and construct forms. Finally HP explains how to use the BDB English and Hebrew Lexicon, the best Hebrew dictionary available on the market. What I found most disappointing about this book is its dry, strictly technical approach to the language and its impersonal tone. Don't expect any historical or cultural digressions, witty remarks, encouragements or study hints. There is simply no dialogue between the authors and the student, which leads me to the assumption that this manual was probably meant primarily for the classroom and not for the independent student.
The staggering amount of silly sentences in the exercises can become tiring and I remind you that most of the book is made of non Biblical material and sometimes you just get very bored with it. Contrary to Hebrew Step by Step, HP has no accompanying cassette to help you pronounce the language and the part on pronunciation is quite shallow and even misleading. The pronunciation of the "a" sound is for example explained with the English word "yacht" but that is plainly a "o" sound. So you end up thinking that Hebrew has no "a" sound and that "Abraham" should be pronounced "Obrohom". Why not take examples from French or Italian? The authors apparently assume that their audience are completely ignorant of foreign languages.
All in all, the Hebrew Primer remains the best introduction to Biblical Hebrew in the absence of a better alternative. But you may consider buying Mansoor's simpler and more concise manual when the ride gets really too tough and you feel like Jonah in the belly of Leviathan.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful resource
Review: This book has a lot of meat to it, but is fun, too. As well as focusing on biblical Hebrew, stressing vocabulary and grammatical forms used in the bible, the authors include a 'tall tale' in each chapter (a familiar story, in Hebrew, at the current reading level of the student). Assumes no prior knowledge, not even the alphabet, but moves right along. I found success studying this book with a small group of people, for mutual reinforcement. A highlight for us has been the way the book gradually leads us thru the Book of Ruth, starting at a simplified level, with vocabulary hints, and gradually moving to the original, as we progress. Also available are an answer book for the exercises, and vocabulary flash cards.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction, though simple
Review: This text makes for a wonderful introduction for the learning of biblical Hebrew. It also includes some of the easiest to use verb and noun tables out there. The exercises were excellent throught out the book, though more Torah readings, particulary ones found in the siddur, versus fairy tales would have been nice. there are a few Drawbacks to the book. One is a rather limted vocabulary. Another is completely ignoring the issue of Peh-ayin-ayin verbs, and the third is that its own strength, simplicity, also means standard linguistic terms such as "gutturals" are replaced with phrases like "throaty-five" which might make dicussions of grammer with more advanced students harder that all said it is still a wonderful introductory book and the one i use when teaching.
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