Sarah Bunin Benor (Ph.D., Stanford University, Linguistics, 2004) studies Jewish languages and American Jewish identities and communities. Her books include Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (2020). Dr. Benor has received the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Jewish Literature, and the National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and director of the Jewish Language Project, which produces the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. She is on the faculty of the Mandel Institute’s Executive Leadership Program, and she has served on various Jewish communal advisory boards, including for the Pew Study of Jewish Americans, the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, Pressman Academy, and Camp Gilboa. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Mark, and their daughters, Aliza, Dalia, and Ariella.
Sarah enjoys helping students apply ideas and research to their professional practice in the Zschool classes she teaches and in her HUC and USC courses on language, identity, and Judaism.