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[quote=Anonymous]As the owner of a high-tech, internationally focused startup who also happens to speak decent Hebrew, I can share that I've used Hebrew in my 20 year career exactly twice --- once to chat with the owner of a Tel Aviv based translation firm that we considered doing some work with (she turned out to be from Ohio, so we quickly switched to English), and once to talk briefly with an Israeli software guy at a networking event.

I also speak (or used to) fairly fluent Egyptian Arabic.  I've likewise used Arabic only occasionally to chat with colleagues about non-work stuff.

I studied biblical Hebrew and Aramaic intensively in a yeshiva, modern Hebrew at ulpan, and Arabic in grad school.  I found all of this really interesting from a linguistics perspective, and Hebrew helped me a ton in learning Arabic, but none of these languages has been useful for me in my career in the software industry.  My experience has been that Hebrew and Arabic speakers tend to speak English (or at least the subset that relates to work) pretty well.

With all of that said, I bear no ill will toward the organizers of a Hebrew immersion charter school.  I would, however, rather see my tax dollars spent otherwise.  I think the idea that Hebrew will be useful for students' careers is not reality-based.  Engineering, math, chemistry or software design skills would be a lot more useful.  German, Chinese and Spanish might also be useful --- I've actually studied both Spanish and German post-university for work, and I've often wished I spoke Chinese.
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