Aviya Kushner is the Forward’s language columnist and the author of Wolf Lamb Bomb and The Grammar of God. Follow her on Twitter @AviyaKushner.
Aviya Kushner
By Aviya Kushner
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Culture Why Online Etiquette is an International Conundrum
When I spent a month in Germany, I noticed how swiftly every danke, or “thank you,” was immediately followed by bitte, or “you’re welcome.” All the Germans I encountered seemed determined to make sure I noticed just how polite they were, and how prompt they were with their politeness. But recently, while emailing an institute…
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Culture Why Trump’s Callous Call To End Birthright Citizenship Is A Jewish Issue
President Trump’s calls to strip American-born citizens of their citizenship should chill all Americans, but it is especially disturbing to anyone with knowledge of Jewish history. Citizenship is a profoundly Jewish issue. In the Middle Ages, many Jews were simply not citizens of their countries. “In much of Europe during the Middle Ages, Jews were…
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Culture Why We Must Pay Attention To What ‘Pay Attention’ Means
In the age of the smartphone, it is getting harder and harder to get human beings to give their all to one person, one subject and one moment. Maybe that’s why a tweet on how various languages express the idea of “paying attention” went viral recently, amassing 28,000 likes and over 7,000 retweets at last…
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Culture Why Right Wing Claim That Kavanaugh Was ‘Crucified’ Is So Dangerous
Comedians often zero in on the Trump Administration’s tendency to depict victims as tormentors — and tormentors as victims. That’s how the #MeToo movement became a referendum on the rights of white men, the “sons” and “husbands” who could be accused at any time for no reason. Now we’re seeing a rewrite of the story…
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Culture Why Transliteration Matters
As defined by Merriam-Webster’s, “transliteration” means “to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet.” And, one unexpected aspect of writing about language is learning how many people around the world turn out to be passionately concerned with transliteration. For example, I have received numerous missives on the spelling of mamaloshn, or “mother tongue”…
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Culture A Jewish Novel From Finland — And Other Treasures Funded By The NEA
In exciting news for readers of global Jewish literature, the National Endowment of the Arts announced translation grants for a Yiddish translator, a Hebrew translator, a Finnish translator translating a Finnish Jewish comic novelist, and a translator of a Swiss-Jewish writer. The highly coveted grants are among the most prestigious available to translators and are…
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Culture TZEDEK: What Does ‘Justice’ Really Mean Anyway?
With all eyes on the U.S. Supreme Court, now is the time to think about justice — both the noun and the idea. For centuries, tzedek, the Hebrew word for justice, and its close relative, tzedakah, charity, have attracted the great minds of Judaism, from the prophet Isaiah to Maimonides — what we might think…
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Culture Behold The Jewish Treasures Of The Library Of Congress
I saw censor’s marks for the first time at the Library of Congress, home to a priceless collection of Hebrew books. I opened a 1486 edition of the machzor, a High Holidays prayer book labeled Minhag Roma, or Roman rite — printed in Italy, bound in marbled boards and featuring leather corners — and gasped…
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