Glo­ria J. Asch­er was born in the Bronx, New York to Emanuel and Esther (Ganon) Asch­er, Ladi­no-speak­ing Sephardic Jews from Smyr­na, now Izmir, Turkey. She attend­ed the Bronx H.S. of Sci­ence, Hunter Col­lege, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn (Ful­bright Grant), and Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. As Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor (now Emeri­ta) of Ger­man, Scan­di­na­vian and Juda­ic Stud­ies and found­ing Co-direc­tor of Juda­ic Stud­ies at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty, she taught Ladi­no Lan­guage and Cul­ture on all lev­els, begin­ning with an intro­duc­to­ry course in Jan­u­ary, 2000, through May, 2017-the first reg­u­lar­ly offered, sub­stan­tial­ly enrolled Ladi­no cours­es at a U.S. col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty. She pre­pared Eng­lish edi­tions of Matil­da Koén-Sara­no’s Ladi­no text­books for begin­ners and advanced stu­dents, and has writ­ten and pre­sent­ed on Ladi­no and Sephardic sub­jects, and on Old Norse and Ger­man lit­er­a­ture. She sings and com­pos­es songs and writes poems in Ladi­no, and teach­es the lan­guage independently.