People

Founding Director: Sarah Bunin Benor

Sarah Bunin Benor is an expert on Jewish languages and names, and she shares her scholarship in academic and general venues for the benefit of society. She is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. Her books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps. Over the years, she has established much of the academic and public-facing infrastructure in the field of Jewish language studies, including the Jewish Languages Website (2002), Journal of Jewish Languages (2012), Jewish English Lexicon (2013), Jewish Language Project (2020), Jewish Names Website (2021), Jewish Language Consortium (2022), and Heritage Words Podcast (2024). Dr. Benor has served as an expert witness in legal cases regarding language and names, and she is often cited in the press and featured on podcasts. She is currently working on two books: one on Jewish languages as heirlooms and one on Jewish names of pets.

Managing Director: Erica Mutschler

Erica is a strategic communications and fundraising communications professional with experience helping organizations communicate with clarity and purpose. She specializes in developing messaging that helps organizations find their voice, tell compelling stories, and clearly articulate who they are, what they do, and why it matters. Drawing on deep experience in fundraising communications, content strategy, and brand messaging, Erica creates communications that strengthen relationships, inspire action, and support long-term growth with a strategic approach grounded in storytelling.

Erica holds a bachelor's degree in communication studies and a master's degree in public communication from American University. She is proud to work with the Jewish Language Project to help strengthen Jewish connection and deepen understanding of Jewish history.

Director of Education and Engagement: Janine Okmin

Janine Okmin is a museum educator and arts administrator. She has developed museum content as Director of Learning and Museum Experience at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Associate Director of Education at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Associate Manager of Learning Through Art at the Guggenheim Museum. Janine is currently the Program Director for the Jewish Writers’ Initiative’s Digital Storytellers Lab, a fellowship for digital media creatives. She holds a BA in Drama from Northwestern University and an MA in Arts Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Heritage Words Program Director: Kyle Elbaz Fingerhut

Kyle produces and edits the Heritage Words podcast and manages all Jewish language lexicons as the Heritage Words program director. In 2023, Kyle became a moderator for the Jewish English Lexicon while studying linguistics as an American student at the University of Amsterdam. Joining this project has been a rewarding opportunity for him to preserve his community's language use while putting his linguistics knowledge into practice. Likewise, encountering words that his family uses at home provides a sense of familiarity and cultural identity, keeping him connected to his family and the Jewish community at large.

Heirloom Program Director: Emma Breslow

Dr. Emma Breslow recently earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her dissertation, entitled Diversity in a diasporic language: Sociolinguistic variation in minority Yiddish contexts, combines her background in sociolinguistics, minoritized or endangered languages, diaspora, and Jewish languages. She has also published work comparing the Jewish English lexicons of Australians and Americans, and is currently serving as a guest editor for a thematic edition of the Journal of Jewish Languages, focused on the revitalization and reclamation of endangered Jewish languages. Having learned Yiddish as an adult, she is an active member of the Yiddish community. As the Heirloom Program director, Emma runs the Language Advocacy volunteer program and the Mentor-Leaarner program.

Mapping Specialist: Jacob Kohn

Jacob Kohn is a data visualization consultant and entrepreneur. His interest in languages stems from a childhood fascination with different scripts, when he tried to learn ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and wrote a letter to King Tut—but never received a response. Later, Jacob continued his pursuit of languages, learning Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Hindi.

Jacob is excited about leveraging technology to help preserve endangered languages, particularly through documentation, data, and maps. Jacob runs Shoresh Maps at Jewish Language Project. He holds a Master's degree in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor's in Politics (Middle East focus) from the University of Virginia.

Content Creation and Documentation

Content Creator: Olive Ivy Benito

Olive Ivy Benito is an actress and vocalist specializing in Yiddish-language music and theatre. She enjoys leading Yiddish folk song singalongs, setting Yiddish poetry to original music, and performing in new Yiddish theatre. Her other areas of interest include Yiddish women’s writing and Jewish Feminist history. Olive recently graduated from Smith College, where she majored in Jewish Studies and Theatre with a 5 College Certificate in Ethnomusicology. She is so grateful to create accessible educational content about Jewish languages as a part of the Jewish Languages Project’s Social Media team!

Content Creator: Benny Ginsberg-Margo

Benny Ginsberg-Margo is an undergraduate student of Linguistics at McGill University in Montréal, Québec. He is interested in language documentation and revitalization, especially in First Nations communities. He comes from a diverse Sephardi-Ashkenazi background, growing up speaking English and Hebrew and later learning Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and French. Benny is also a Wikitongues Language Revitalization fellow, working to make recipe videos in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). He is very excited to collaborate with the Jewish Language Project!

Content Creator: Finn Jacobson

Finn Jacobson is an undergraduate student and Student Body Vice President at the University of Oregon. He is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and Global Studies. His areas of interest are sociolinguistics, language documentation, and community-based linguistic development and empowerment. He comes from a Swedish-speaking background and has proficiency in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. Finn has a strong passion for the deep, profound relationship between Judaism, the Jewish people, and language, and is honored to be doing his part in helping the Jewish Language Project to document and provide education surrounding languages integral to the identity of Jews across the globe.

Documentation Consultant: Jacob Aaron Kodner

Jacob Aaron Kodner is a PhD student in linguistics at Harvard University. His interests include theoretical syntax and endangered language documentation, with emphases in East Asian and Jewish languages. Having served as Documentation Manager, his passion is bringing native speakers, volunteers, and linguists together to develop digital resources for endangered Jewish languages. He has experience in filming and disseminating oral histories, curating dictionaries, and grant writing. Growing up in a Ukrainian-American Jewish family, he enjoys applying his knowledge of linguistics and documentation to Jewish languages.

Highlights:
• Judeo-Iranian language page
• Grant with Wikimedia Foundation
• Judeo-Shirazi oral history
• Jewish Neo-Aramaic dictionary
• Judeo-Arabic oral history

Documentation Assistant: Sam Miller

Sam (Shamuel/Szmuzl) Miller is an AI researcher who specializes in the use of Language Processing to bolster the vitality of endangered languages. He is a speaker of Lishan Didan, Jewish Neo-Aramaic from Urmia, Iran. Some of his work at the Jewish Language Project includes documenting Lishan Didan by recording oral histories and aiding in the creation of a Jewish Neo-Aramaic dictionary. He is also involved in supporting efforts that use emerging technologies to benefit Jewish languages.

Documentation Assistant: Alan Niku

Alan Niku is a filmmaker, writer, and scholar of Mizrahi culture from San Luis Obispo, California. A native speaker of Persian, he spends his time learning related Jewish languages, including Jewish Neo-Aramaic, deciphering Judeo-Persian manuscripts, and interviewing community members about their stories. He dabbles in traditional music, cooking, and liturgy, teaches history and Jewish heritage at various levels, and seeks to teach the world about the underrepresented cultures of the Middle East through his writing and films.

Documenter: Ariel Nosrat

Ariel Nosrat is a Board member at the Lishana Institute in Israel, which works to preserve Jewish Neo-Aramaic and
culture. He was born in Tehran to a Jewish family with origins in the Iranian province of Kurdistan. Ariel is
developing an online Jewish Neo-Aramaic dictionary featuring audio recordings and visual representations.
He speaks English, Hebrew, Persian, French and Dutch. Ariel holds a Masters degree from Brunel
University, UK, and helps non-profits to achieve operational effectiveness.

Content Creator: Isabel Olazar

Isabel Olazar is a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Alaska. She received her B.A. from Florida Atlantic University in Linguistics with a specialty in Spanish Linguistics. As a Jewish conversion student from a Hispanic background, she is excited to be working for the Jewish Language Project, where she can combine her love of linguistics with her love of Judaism. Isabel is passionate about language documentation and language revitalization, which she plans to pursue in graduate school.

Jewish Lexicon Project

Jewish French Lexicon: Cyril Aslanov

Cyril Aslanov is a professor of linguistics at Aix-Marseille University and researcher at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (UMR 7309 of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Since 2006 he has been a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. His field of expertise is the historical dimension of the dynamics of language contact in Romance, Semitic, and ancient Indo-European languages.

Jewish Latin American Spanish Lexicon Moderator: Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted

Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted is a linguistic anthropologist and applied researcher based in Miami, FL. Her academic work centers on language and identity among Jewish Latin Americans. Her book, Coming of Age as Syrian Jewish Mexicans: The Pragmatics of Diaspora (Brill 2025) is a linguistic ethnography of life among young adult Shamis and Halebis in Mexico City. She co-created the Léxico Judío Latinoamericano with Sarah Benor and co-authored chapters on the Spanish of Jewish Latin Americans with Susana Skura.From 2013-2019, Dean-Olmsted was Assistant/Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico. She later worked in health outcomes research and is currently Project Lead with Rosov Consulting, a research and evaluation firm that serves Jewish non-profit organizations.

Jewish German Lexicon Moderator: Auden Finch

Auden Finch is an undergraduate at the University of Washington majoring in the Comparative History of Ideas with a focus on Yiddish and German-Jewish literature. He is curious about multilingualism, translation, and the role of language in shaping human relationships with the natural world. Auden is passionate about language documentation and education and hopes to foster engagement with both ancient and emerging Jewish languages.

Jewish Latin American Spanish Lexicon Moderator: Anayeli Hernández Cruz

Anayeli Hernández Cruz is a doctoral candidate in linguistics at the Colegio de México in Mexico City. She specializes in the study of migrant communities from the perspective of language contact and lexicology. Her dissertation focuses on the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Mexico City. Since 2017, she has served as an instructor at Mexico’s Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Currently she is an editor for the journal Lingüística Mexicana and the coordinator of the virtual and collaborative database Léxico Judío Latinoamericano, created by Drs. Sarah Bunin Benor and Evelyn Dean-Olmsted.

Linguistic Researcher: Rachel Steindel Burdin

Dr. Rachel Steindel Burdin is Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the English Department of the University of New Hampshire. She received her PhD in Linguistics from The Ohio State University. Her dissertation research focused on the influence of Yiddish intonation on Jewish English, and her work since then has continued to explore how language is used in the creation of Jewish identity, particularly its relationship to place.

Jewish Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon Moderator: Karin Zingerevitz

Karin Zingerevitz is the Regional Director for PJ Library in Latin America, Spain and Portugal and the co-editor of the Portuguese edition of the Torah – A Modern Commentary (Chumash Plaut) published in 2021 by the UJR-Amlat. She is also the coordinator of the Introduction to Judaism class at ARI’s synagogue in Rio de Janeiro, a Ketubá designer and soferet. She holds a Masters in Jewish Non-profit Management from HUC-JIR and Public Administration from USC.

Advisory Board

Our Advisory Board is drawn from the fields of linguistics, education, technology, the arts, and community leadership. These individuals bring their expertise to discussions of the Jewish Language Project's strategic and programmatic development.

Amy Amiel

Amy Amiel is a life-long professional in the Jewish community. She loves all things language, especially reading, editing, word games and etymologies. Amy has an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a BA in linguistics from Barnard College.

Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted

Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr

Ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion, Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr is the editor of Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies and is currently working on her second book on Proverbs 31. She is also the former Jewish Chaplain at Lafayette College (Easton, PA) as well as a Rabbi Without Borders Fellow.

Benjamin Hary

Benjamin Hary is Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and the current Director of NYU Tel Aviv. He has published widely in his area of research on Jewish language varieties, especially Judeo-Arabic; Jews in the Islamic world; the politics of Arabic in Israeli society; corpus linguistics; Language and Religion; dialectology; and sociolinguistics. Among his books: Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic (1992) and Translating Religion (2009); and among his edited books: Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects in Judeo-Arabic Culture (2006) and Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (2018, with Sarah Benor), as well as many articles and book reviews.

Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi

Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi has taught languages at Tehran University Language Center, LAUSD, and Santa Monica College and worked as a supervisor and vocational rehabilitation evaluator for JVS and a vocational rehabilitation counselor for the California State Department of Rehabilitation. In retirement, she is writing her memoirs and volunteering for the Emergency Fund Committee of the Iranian American Jewish Federation. A legacy learner of Judeo-Hamedani, she has conducted many interviews with speakers of endangered Iranian Jewish languages.

Rabbi Yechiel Hoffman

Rabbi Yechiel Hoffman, EdD empowers individuals to embark on personal journeys through meaningful collective learning experiences. As a community activist, he serves as a rabbinic adviser, activist and outreach expert for issues related to LGBTQIA+ inclusion, women's issues, and education. Yechiel’s educational leadership has enriched the Jewish journeys of children and adults in as diverse settings as Jewish Day Schools, community organizations, synagogues and Jewish ed-tech. Yechiel received the prestigious Pomegranate Prize from the Covenant Foundation, earned a Doctorate in Education from Northeastern University, and is the co-founder of JedLAB.

Aviya Kushner

Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is The Forward’s language columnist and the author of WOLF LAMB BOMB (Orison Books), a New & Noteworthy Poetry selection of The New York Times and winner of The Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and The Grammar of God (Spiegel & Grau) a National Jewish Book Award Finalist and Sami Rohr Prize Finalist. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Translation, she is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Yifat Mukades

Yifat Mukades is an American, Israeli, Mizrachi, and Iraqi Jew navigating her identities every day. She earned an MA.Ed. degree with a focus on Experiential Education from American Jewish University (AJU). Currently, she spends her summers at Camp JCA Shalom as Jewish Program Director and Rosh Mishlachat. In summer 2022 she will be joining the 21st Maccabiah Games with Maccabi USA as the first ever Maccabi Educator Fellow. Yifat is excited about speaking and preserving the Judeo-Arabic (Jewish Iraqi) language in both the US and in Israel.

Josh Olmsted

Josh Olmsted is a seasoned fundraising and nonprofit professional with more than 20 years of experience. He has built and led development programs from the ground up—including annual giving, grant departments, phone campaigns, and capital campaigns—and has a proven ability to adapt strategies to organizations of all sizes, from large institutions raising hundreds of millions annually to one-person advancement shops.

Prior to joining the Winkler Group, Josh served Zoo Miami Foundation, where he established the Foundation and Government Relations Department. Under his leadership, the department more than doubled grant revenue and secured millions in additional state appropriations.

A recognized voice in the field, Josh has published in Connect magazine and presented on fundraising strategy for audiences ranging from the Junior League of Miami to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. He is also deeply engaged in his community, helping lead the capital campaign for his synagogue, Congregation Bet Shira.

Josh earned a Master of Public Affairs in Nonprofit Management from the O’Neill School at Indiana University and holds a Certificate in Fundraising from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. 

Rabbi David Osachy

Rabbi David Osachy is an amateur linguist who specializes in Jewish onomastics. He holds a degree in Islamic History from Columbia University and a graduate certificate in Southeast Asian Languages from Cornell University. A descendant of Turkic-speaking Jews of the Black Sea region, he has particular interest in the history and naming patterns of small and little-known Jewish communities around the world. Rabbi Osachy is the author of an academic study of the Jewish community of Surabaya, East Java, which was written in the Indonesian language.

Ayelet Pearl

Ayelet Pearl is an artist, educator, and curator, working at the intersection of community and creativity. Ayelet is a cofounder of Ashreynu, a pluralistic arts and music community; as well as a DEI and community engagement consultant. Ayelet is a rabbinic student at the Academy for Jewish Religion and a master’s candidate in Art History and Museum Studies at CCNY, working to explore creative ways of bringing Jewish culture, arts, practice, and history to cultural spaces.

Michal Avera Samuel

Michal Avera Samuel, M.Ed. is Researcher and Coordinator for Shalom Curriculum Project at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A seasoned leader with 20 years of experience pioneering and leading cross-cultural community-building and educational efforts, Ms. Avera Samuel was born in Gondar, Ethiopia and airlifted to Israel in the 1984 “Operation Moses” rescue. Prior to joining Shalom Curriculum Project, she was a community shlicha in Ohio. In Israel, Michal served as the CEO of FIDEL Association, advocating for the successful integration of Ethiopian Israelis and serving on the prestigious national Round Table Panel on Social Issues and research assistant for the Israel Democracy Institute. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Counseling from Haifa University and sits on numerous boards and volunteers with organizations, served as spokesperson and advisor to the Scholarship Fund for Ethiopian Jews in Boca Raton, FL.

Ofra Tirosh-Becker

Ofra Tirosh-Becker is a Professor of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic and the Head of The Center of Jewish Languages at the Hebrew University, a member of the executive committee of The Academy of the Hebrew Language, and a founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages (JJL). Her research focuses on the contacts between Arabic and Hebrew, North-African Judeo-Arabic dialectology, Neo-Judeo-Arabic translations of the Bible and post-biblical texts, Karaite Hebrew, and the application of Natural Language Processing (NPL) tools to Judeo-Arabic.

Seth Weisberg

Seth (Shloyme) Weisberg is the retired Chief Legal Officer of Stamps.com. He has testified as a legal expert in Congress, and has recited original Yiddish poetry at Yiddishland and Yiddish New York.
He has been studying Yiddish in Los Angeles and elsewhere since the
early 1990s, and has an AB in Physics and Astronomy from Harvard, an AM in History from Harvard and a JD from Columbia Law School.