Jewish Heritage Words: Connecting to Our Ancestors and Communities

Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy.  

6:00 Refreshments and opportunity to tour the Jewish Languages: A Cultural Dialogue exhibit
6:30 Presentation by Dr. Sarah Benor

Most Jews today do not speak the native languages of their great-grandparents, but they maintain some “heritage words”—words from ancestral Jewish languages that have been passed down the generations. In this talk, Dr. Sarah Benor will explain the historical circumstances that led to this situation and will describe the phenomenon, based on interviews from the Heritage Words Podcast. Heritage words may relate to food, family, endearment, and curses, and they are often emotionally charged, allowing individuals to connect with their living and deceased relatives and express their multifaceted identities. This presentation will include an interactive portion where participants discuss their own heritage words.

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps, as well as many articles about Jewish languages, Yiddish, 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 the books Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage. She founded and directs the Hebrew Union College Jewish Language Project, which runs the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon, and she hosts the Heritage Words podcast. Her current research projects analyze the experiences of Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews in Los Angeles and the names of American Jews and their pets.