Aviya Kushner is the Forward’s language columnist and the author of Wolf Lamb Bomb and The Grammar of God.
Aviya Kushner
By Aviya Kushner
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Culture Why we should fear Trump’s call to ‘stand back and stand by’
President Trump directly addressed white supremacists through language they understand as a direct command during the first Presidential debate. Asked to condemn white supremacy, Trump instead said “stand back and stand by”— immediately setting off alarm bells among extremism researchers who are familiar with these terms. Alex Newhouse, an extremism researcher at the Center on…
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Culture A senator’s slip of the tongue reveals a ‘material’ crisis with our ‘materialistic’ politics
“There’s a materialistic difference between 2016 and 2020,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the number three ranking Senate Republican, said on the “PBS News Hour,” speaking on the question of appointing Supreme Court judges in those two election years. First, I thought it was a slip of the tongue. But now I think it is…
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Opinion Can editors recognize anti-Semitism? An article about Soros suggests no
It was a shock to read in The Chicago Tribune that George Soros is the secret force causing Chicago’s woes. Yes, that’s The Chicago Tribune, one of America’s major papers, not Hungarian propaganda. And worse, the column claimed that Soros, the Hungarian-born philanthropist, was the reason for the problems of — wait for it —…
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Opinion Donald Trump’s deadly game of persuasion
This article is part of a new series called “On Persuasion.” We asked thought leaders to consider what persuasion means to them. What works in terms of persuading people? Is it moot in 2020? What is the Jewish value of persuasion? Should we be opening our minds to other points of view, or closing them…
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Culture Finally, the rarest Jewish texts from Italy will be available online
Italy has been home to Jewish communities for over two millennia, and it has been an important location for writers and scholars — as well as a major center for manuscript production and printing. That has meant a huge number of Hebrew books with tremendous historical value. For scholars, though, some of those books have…
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Culture No, that Trump bible photo isn’t ‘beautiful’ — it’s terrifying
President Trump has made two ultra-clear and extremely dangerous points with deep resonances in the history of totalitarianism: that visuals matter more than people’s lives, and that some people’s opinions — and by extension, lives — matter more than others. “I think it was a beautiful picture,” President Trump said on Fox when asked about…
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Culture His ads changed how Jews were perceived — do they still matter?
Advertising is a form of history. That’s the overwhelming thought you get when you listen to the legendary Gary Wexler discuss his 20 years of arresting, moving, and often simply heart-stopping advertisements about Jewish community and identity that will now be an archive at the National Library of Israel. While Jewish history is often told…
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Culture For Jews, curfews bring eerie reminders of Medieval and Holocaust eras
As cities across America contend with nightly curfews, many of us are likely unaware that the word “curfew” originates in medieval French and has resonances that run through centuries of Jewish history. The latest news can seem increasingly medieval — from plague to authoritarianism to the public murder of minorities — and the sudden ubiquity…
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Opinion Why does Trump’s Gaza plan sound so familiar? Because the Nazis tried it first
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