A Spouse visa is a glorified L (Tourist) visa. The biggest difference is that it's easier to get a Spouse visa for longer periods than it is for Tourist visas.
Note that a Spouse visa, like any other L visa, DOES NOT CONVEY THE RIGHT TO WORK. If your husband gets a Spouse visa and wants to work, he'll still need to get a Work Permit...which hopefully his school can help him get...but don't know for sure if this can be done for L visas, even a Spouse, or not.
If the visa does have to be changed, that could be bad. He may have to go back home to get a Z visa for re-entry. Check with any potential employers on this and see what kind of magic, if any, can be invoked to make this easier.
Unless the husband is really keen on learning Chinese or taking classes, you probably want to give the Student visa approach a miss. To get one of these visas, you have to actually enroll in (ie pay for) classes, which can be expensive and might lead to their own hassles. Check with your local Chinese programs...your hubby may have to be something approaching a full-time student before a school will issue him a visa...taking one basic Chinese class may not be enough to do the trick. Student visa dates are also heavily tied to class schedules...so when the classes end, so does the visa. Best advice? Ignore the personal accounts on this you're probably about to get, and check with the local schools for right-here, right-now information.
The Spouse/L visa approach may be a lot less problematic.
Dear, I hate to keep raining on your parade, but it's probably going to be the case that you can't just have a friend translate things into Chinese, then notarize the translation. Such official transactions generally require the use of an "Official Translator"...ie someone with a red stamp that marks his documents with a stamp saying it was translated by an "Official Translator". These guys charge a small fortune for doing their translations...it's expensive in English; hate to even think what it'll cost for something like Hebrew...but make up for the high price by generally having very little fluency in the language they Officially Translate.
TIFC.
I don't know... it's possible this requirement has changed, but you need to find out in hopes of not wasting a lot of effort and enduring more delays.