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 Pandemics have always incited anti-Semitism. Here’s the history you need to know.
Every pandemic begins with a terrifying moment in which it seems impossible to explain what is happening. Often, whoever is considered the “other” in society is blamed, a scapegoating we see happening here and now. President Trump’s administration has drawn criticism for periodically insisting on calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus,” a move many see…
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Culture Why Zoom means boom time for Ladino
A remarkable class in Ladino — held entirely online on Zoom — is attracting hundreds of people from around the world, all using the time locked down at home to take advantage of a rare and free course offered through the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America’s digital academy. Ladino is one of the most important…
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Culture How Trump uses blood libel rhetoric against ‘invisible enemy’
When President Trump uses the phrase “invisible enemy” to describe the coronavirus, he is using the vocabulary of medieval libels against Jews. Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must…
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Culture How people across the globe are discussing social distancing
Translators and lexicographers are working overtime as new virus-related words and phrases enter our daily vocabulary. One urgent problem: How to convey “social distancing” in a variety of languages, with all sorts of dizzying cultural contexts, so that everyone can understand how to save lives? As for what “social distancing” means in English, Chicago’s Commissioner…
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Culture Why Trump’s ‘foreign virus’ speech is as dangerous as coronavirus itself
President Trump’s speech on what he called a “foreign virus” left the overwhelming impression that foreigners are the virus. The President’s disturbing phrasing echoed centuries of dangerous anti-Semitic rhetoric blaming Jews for widespread disease. Take a close look at this sentence, which Chris Cillizza of CNN had to tweet out for those who couldn’t believe…
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Culture From an Israeli master, one final gift
And the Bride Closed the Door: By Ronit Matalon, translated by Jessica Cohen New Vessel Press, $128 pages, $15.95 Ronit Matalon died just one day after she received Israel’s prestigious Brenner Prize for her novel “And the Bride Closed the Door.” Matalon’s daughter, who accepted the prize for her mother, drew a parallel between the…
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Culture Why ‘Good News’ from Sanders sounds like bad news to so many Jews
During the most recent Democratic debate, which ended with two candidates quoting a New Testament verse as their motto and one sharing that he draws a cross on his hand every day, I was left with a surprising feeling: one of the Jewish candidates on the stage actually sounded a bit Christian in both his…
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Culture From Hungary — wild poems of Hasidic rabbis and brutal murderers
There are very few poetry collections which grow out of a backstory like the unspeakable one which powers the major Hungarian poet Szilárd Borbély’s “Final Matters,” and which left me shaking. “At two in the morning, his father had heard noises at the front door: he opened it and was struck on the head, falling…
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