Sarah Bunin Benor, Ph.D., Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department, has been appointed Vice Provost, as of July 1, 2021.
Dr. Benor will assist the Provost in the execution of academic affairs at HUC, with a focus on revising the faculty handbook, managing accreditation, and strengthening faculty culture at the College-Institute. She will combine this position with teaching responsibilities in the Louchheim School for Judaic Studies and other programs on HUC’s Skirball Campus in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, Ph.D., Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost, stated, “The appointment of Dr. Sarah Benor as Assistant Provost positions us well to make progress on our goals of educational excellence and growing our impact. As Online Learning Task Force Chair, Los Angeles Faculty Chair, and Founding Director of the Jewish Language Project, Sarah has proven that she possesses the organizational skills and strategic mindset needed to oversee large projects and implement processes that will help us enhance the faculty experience and broaden the impact our stellar faculty can have in and beyond the classroom.”
Dr. Benor received her B.A. from Columbia University in Comparative Literature in 1997 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020), as well as many articles about Jewish languages and American Jews. Dr. Benor has received several fellowships and prizes, including the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, 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 co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage (Luminare Press, 2017). She founded and directs the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project, which runs the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. She is currently working on a project analyzing the names Jews give their children and their pets.