hebrew in a request parameter

[Yair Ben-meir]

hey
i call a link like "tmp.jsp?yair=א" (yairs value is an hebrew letter). in tmp.jsp, i 
use request.getParameter("yair") and get a string - "?" (i looked at the bytes and 
confirm that it is not a miss in the encoding, but a real "?"). how do i tell the 
tomcat how to deal with the encoding of the request parameter?
thanks
yair