Why ‘Shithole Countries’ Sounds A Bit More Poetic In Hebrew
Donald Trump with flying toupee Image by Getty Images
If you’re wondering what “shithole countries” are in Hebrew, here’s the answer from Israeli newspaper Haaretz: medinot mechurbanot.
Countries = medinot. And, well, shitty = mechurban. Of course, churban is “destruction” in Hebrew, as in the destruction of the Temple. Or Temples.
For the uninitiated, churban is a college-appropriate word, but mechurban is not.
Maybe a nicer way of translating Trump is to take a cue from Temple history and say “post-destruction,” which seems to apply these days not only to Temples but also to presidencies.
Mechurban is not exactly elevated, fit-for-company Hebrew, but it sounds a little better than the word Trump chose: “shithole.” In both Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot, another Israeli paper, the main story was about how Trump was responding to reactions to his language.
But on the street, on a 15-minute walk through Tel Aviv, the word “shithole” — in English — was heard every few minutes. Not mechurban, and not churban.
Trump, untranslated, remains the main story. Not Trump trying to spin what Trump said. Apparently, appalling language doesn’t need a translation, even after a year of it. The destruction of America’s presidential language is apparent, across the world.
That is the true hole we are in, right now.
Aviya Kushner is the Forward’s language columnist and the author of “The Grammar of God” (Spiegel & Grau, 2015). Follow her on Twitter, @AviyaKushner
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
