He was a past Director of The Hispanic Institute at Columbia University's Sephardic Studies Section in the late 1920s.
[1] Benardete was born in the Ottoman Empire, in the city of Çanakkale, on Dardanalles, Turkey.
Under Benardete's direction, the Sephardic Section of Casa Hispanica hosted or sponsored lectures on Sephardic civilization, generated articles for the institute's "Revista Hispanica Moderna,", published a Ladino/Spanish commemorative volume on the medieval Spanish-Jewish poet, Yehuda Halevi, and staged dramatic performances in Judaeo-Spanish.
In 1962, two Sephardic activists, Louis N. Levy and David N. Barocas, published "Studies in Honor of M.J.
[5] Benardete's wife was a professor in the English department at Brooklyn College.