title: How to decode and encode Hebrew strings?
body: <p>I am trying to encode and decode the Hebrew string &quot;שלום&quot;. However, after encoding, I get gibberish:</p>
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; word = &quot;שלום&quot;
  &gt;&gt;&gt; word = word.decode('UTF-8')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; word
  u'\u05e9\u05dc\u05d5\u05dd'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print word
  שלום
  &gt;&gt;&gt; word = word.encode('UTF-8')
  &gt;&gt;&gt; word
  '\xd7\xa9\xd7\x9c\xd7\x95\xd7\x9d'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print word
  ׳©׳׳•׳
  </code></pre>
  <p>How should I do it properly?</p>