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People
Founding Director: Sarah Bunin Benor
Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor is Vice Provost and Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles campus) and Adjunct Professor (by courtesy) in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She has published and lectured widely about Jewish languages, linguistics, Yiddish, American Jews, and Orthodox Jews. Her books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers, 2020). Dr. Benor is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages (Brill) and co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018).
Director of Education and Engagement: Hannah S. Pressman
Dr. Hannah S. Pressman is a scholar of Jewish languages and literatures. She received her Ph.D. in modern Hebrew literature from New York University, where she focused on translation studies, Jewish philosophies of language, and the genre of self-writing. Dr. Pressman is affiliated faculty with the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington. She is co-editor of Choosing Yiddish: New Frontiers of Language and Culture (Wayne State, 2013). Her writing has appeared in several academic and popular venues such as Tablet, Lilith, eSefarad, and JTA. Dr. Pressman is currently working on a memoir entitled Galante’s Daughter: A Sephardic Family Journey, studying Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and practicing her solitreo script.
Curator: Eden Moyal
Eden Moyal is a junior at UCLA studying linguistics, and is especially fascinated with the intersections between language, society, and identity. Her particular academic interests revolve around sociolinguistics within Judaism and the LGBTQ+ community. She grew up between Israel and Los Angeles and is fluent in Modern Israeli Hebrew, and is always looking for ways to expand her knowledge of the languages spoken by her ancestors.
Curator and Curriculum Writer: 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.
Curator: Abby Graham
Abby Graham is a linguist, teacher, and beginning Yiddish learner focusing on heritage, Indigenous, and minoritized language revitalization. She works on language accessibility for families and learning resources. Abby lives in ancestral Massachusett territory in Boston, MA. She recently curated the Women's Voices exhibit for the Jewish Language Project.
Research Assistant and Editor: Elaine Miller
Dr. Elaine Miller received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her dissertation examined multiglossia among the Jews of medieval Spain. In addition to her work with the Jewish Language Project, she is a copy editor for the Journal of Jewish Languages. She was formerly an assistant professor at Georgia State University.
Documentation
Documentation Manager: Jacob Aaron Kodner
Jacob Aaron Kodner is a recent graduate from the Department of Language Science at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests range from theoretical syntax to language documentation, with an emphasis in East Asian and Jewish languages. He has experience in documenting and developing digital resources for Manchu, an endangered language spoken in China, and has a great passion for creating dictionaries and collaborating with native speakers, volunteers, and linguists alike. Growing up in a Jewish-American family, he is excited to apply his knowledge of linguistics and documentation to Jewish languages.
Outreach Coordinator: Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi
Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi has taught languages at Tehran University Language Center, LAUSD, and Santa Monica College, worked as a supervisor and vocational rehabilitation evaluator for JVS, and as 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.
Documentation Assistant: Noah Khaloo
Noah Kahloo is a recent graduate from the University of California, Irvine. Currently, he is pursuing a post-baccalaureate certificate from Chapman University for speech and communication disorders. He comes from a family of Jewish-Neo-Aramaic speakers from Iran and Russia, and he is very interested in the sociolinguistic and sociocultural aspects of Jewish history.
Documentation Assistant: Samuel Miller
Samuel Miller is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland studying Computer Science with focuses in Computational Linguistics, Machine Learning, & Cybersecurity. He is half Nash Didan, half Ashkenazi, and is a speaker of Lishan Didan. He is looking forward to one day using novel computational techniques to help document and revitalize dialects of Jewish Neo-Aramaic.
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.
Documentation Assistant: Michael Zargari
Michael Zargari is a Masters of Environmental Data Science student at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB). He graduated from UCSB with a B.S. in Statistics and Data Science, B.A. in Economics, and minors in Iranian Studies and Translation Studies. Michael has a background in Iranian Jewish history and languages, particularly with Judeo-Esfahani and Judeo-Kermani. He hopes to help preserve these languages and revive traditional Judeo-Persian speech and pronunciation of Hebrew. He looks forward to continuing to learn even more about the Jewish languages of Iran.
Curator: Isabel Olazar
Isabel Olazar is a recent graduate from Florida Atlantic University. She received her B.A. in Linguistics with a specialty in Spanish Linguistics. As a Jewish conversion student from a Hispanic background, she is excited to be working on the Léxico Judío Latinoamericano where she will be combining 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.
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.
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.
Jewish Lexicon Project
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 Latin American Spanish Lexicon Moderator: Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted
Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted is an anthropologist who studies Jewish Latin American. She co-created the Léxico Judío Latinoamericano with Sarah Benor and co-authored chapters on the Spanish of Jewish Latin Americans with Susana Skura. Her forthcoming book, To be Mexican, Jewish, and Arab: The Pragmatics of Diaspora, is a linguistic ethnography of life among Shami- and Halebi-Jewish Mexicans. From 2013-2019, Dean-Olmsted was Assistant/Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico. She is now Manager of Health Outcomes Research at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Miami.
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.
Jewish Latin American Spanish Lexicon: Isabel Olazar
Isabel Olazar is a recent graduate from Florida Atlantic University. She received her B.A. in Linguistics with a specialty in Spanish Linguistics. As a Jewish conversion student from a Hispanic background, she is excited to be working on the Léxico Judío Latinoamericano where she will be combining 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 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.
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