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).

Assistant Director: 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.

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 & Documentation Manager: Eden Moyal

Eden Moyal is a UCLA graduate with a degree in linguistics and anthropology, 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.

Highlights:
• Multilingual Omer Counter
• JArts Kolture Exhibits
• Algerian Jewish Sign Language
• Fun Fact Writing

Graphic Designers

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.

Graphic Designer: Gittel Marcus

Gittel Marcus is an Israeli designer, currently residing in the city of Harish. Born and raised in Detroit Michigan, she received her B.A. in Jewish Studies from Hofstra University in New York. Her book, Night Tales from Meron Mountain, was published in 2016. She is passionate about celebrating the journey of Am Yisrael, in the homeland and throughout the diaspora.

Documentation

Documentation Manager: Eden Moyal

Eden Moyal is a senior at UCLA studying linguistics and anthropology, 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.

Highlights:
• Multilingual Omer Counter
• JArts Kolture Exhibits
• Algerian Jewish Sign Language
• Fun Fact Writing

Haideh Herbert-Aynehchi: Outreach Coordinator

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 Khaloo is a first year linguistics PhD student at UC San Diego. His main interests revolve around observing the phonemic and phonological realizations of languages and accents.
He comes from a family of Jewish Neo-Aramaic speakers from Urmia, Iran and has done some work preserving his family's dialect. As a documentation assistant for the Jewish Language Project, he has been able to work on the transcriptions and translations of several Judeo-Iranian languages, including Judeo-Shirazi and Judeo-Hamedani.
He believes that the goal of the Jewish Language Project is to help connect people to their heritage through linguistics, philology, and history, and he is proud to be a part of this effort.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Jewish Lexicon Project

Jewish Lexicon Manager: Kyle Fingerhut

In 2023, Kyle became a moderator for the JEL 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.

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.

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 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.

Jewish Swedish Lexicon Moderator: Finn Jacobson

Finn Jacobson is a second-year 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.

Lexicon Programmer: Josh Vogel

Josh Vogel, an experienced web technologist and data analyst, has been the programmer for the Lexicon sites for over 5 years and has led the development of several new features. He lives in Israel with his wife and 4 children. View his full portfolio at www.joshthewebman.com.

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.

Interns and Volunteers

Auden Finch

Auden Finch is a recent graduate from the University of Washington with a degree 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.

Dr. Evgeniya Gutova

Dr. Evgeniya Gutova is a scholar of Berber languages. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Sorbonne. Her dissertation is a descriptive multidialectal grammar of Senhaja Berber varieties spoken in Northern Morocco, and she is currently working on a dictionary of these varieties. Her writing has appeared in several academic and popular venues. She is excited to apply her knowledge of linguistics (and Berber in particular) to the Judeo-Berber recordings that are part of the Jewish Language Project.

Finn Jacobson

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. 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.

Isaac Mayer

From a family of musicians, Isaac believes that creative art is one of the most powerful ways to get in touch with the divine. Born in San Diego, CA, Isaac is currently studying curriculum development as part of the Day School Educators’ Program at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem. He studied linguistics and creative writing at Rutgers University. He is now a regular prayer leader at several synagogues, his compositions have been performed by multiple Jewish organizations, and he is a regular contributor to the Open Siddur Project. When not doing Jewish creative work, you can find Isaac cooking Jewish food (which is creative in its own way).

Annabel Noar

Annabel Noar, research assistant, is a PhD student in Linguistics at Australia's Monash University. Her research interests center around heritage language maintenance as well as the connection between religious identity and language use across the spheres of modern society.

Isabel Olazar

Charlie Perlstein

Charlie Perlstein recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in Linguistics and a minor in Jewish Studies. He is fascinated by language revitalization efforts and inspired by people's drive to learn about their heritage in its own language. He is continuing to further his own Jewish education by learning Hebrew. He is excited about the opportunity to work in the revitalization of Jewish languages and unlocking levels of knowledge for future generations of heritage speakers.
Charlie is currently helping to digitize and record a living dictionary of Judeo-Kashani.

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.

Rachel Bortnick

Rachel Amado Bortnick, a retired ESL teacher residing in Dallas, Texas, was born and raised in Izmir, Turkey. In 1999 she founded Ladinokomunita, an online Ladino correspondence group which today has about 1500 members from all over the world.

Mark David

Mark David is a computing professional, host/producer of Yiddish Voice Radio (Boston, MA), and moderator of the UYIP (Understanding Yiddish Information Processing) mailing list.

Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted

Evelyn María Dean-Olmsted is an anthropologist who studies Jewish Latin America. 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.

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.

Dan Nussbaum

Dr. Daniel Nussbaum grew up in a multilingual home and neighborhood, thus he was always interested in languages. Part of the reason he chose to go into Developmental Pediatrics was that it is concerned with language development. Jewishness has always been a large part of his life, and learning about Jewish languages combines many of his interests.

Josh Olmsted

Josh has been a professional fundraiser for more than 15 years, specializing in annual giving, major gifts, and grant writing. Currently, as Grants Writer for Zoo Miami Foundation, Josh is responsible for the application, administration, and management of all grants. He also serves on the Conservation Committee at Zoo Miami, dedicated to funding important conservation and research initiatives across the world, and manages the Kushlan Wading Birds grant award and committee.

Past Employees, Interns, and Volunteers

Thank you to the many people whose efforts have helped us to develop this website and related resources over the years, including:

Communications, Content, and Web Design:

Molly Cutler

Alyssa Feigelson

Shawn Fields-Meyer

Julia Hananel

Eleanor Harris

Eden Glaser

Miryam Greenwood

Lewis Lenard

Elaine Miller

Gabe Miner

Ishaq Nana Adjei Ofori-Solomon

Phyllis Pawa

Sofia Rubio

Lael Sacho-Tanzer

Tsvi Sadan (Tsuguya Sasaki)

Jewish English Lexicon:

Isaac Bleaman

Alexandra Casser

Noam Fields-Meyer

Hannah Kober

Eliran Sobel

Matan Kruskal

Interested in getting involved with the Jewish Language Project as a volunteer or intern? We're looking for help in the following areas:

Design
Fundraising
Social media
TikTok specialist
Content development
Curriculum development
Interviewing speakers of endangered Jewish languages
Creating Living Dictionaries for endangered Jewish languages
Recording entries for the Jewish English Lexicon
Creating or working on a Jewish lexicon for another language

Please let us know you're interested in helping out by filling out this form. Thank you for your interest!