Miriam Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies at Emory University. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard University and was ordained in 2019 at Yeshivat Maharat.

Udel is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. She is the editor and translator of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature (NYU Press, 2020), winner of the Judaica Reference Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Udel's translation of Chaver Paver's 1935 story collection Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup will appear in 2026 with SUNY Press. In October, Princeton published her critical study Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children's Literature.

Her research looks to children's literature and culture as a powerful force for political formation and a resource for the intergenerational transmission of culture, values, and ideology. She spent 2024-25 in New York as the inaugural Robert S. Rifkind Senior Fellow at the Center for Jewish History, the Covenant Foundation Jewish Family Education Fellow, and the Emory College Chronos Fellow.

Photo: Sarah Woods