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 Even dictionaries couldn’t keep up with language in 2020
So much happened in 2020 that not even the Word of the Year folks at the Oxford English Dictionary could come up with just one word to describe the past year; instead, the august dictionary folks issued a 38-page report on “words of an unprecedented year” — complete with colorful bar charts distilling how we…
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Opinion The right demonized journalists. Now they’re turning on scientists.
I am no longer shocked when I receive an email with a photo of my face super-imposed on an image of crematoria; like many other Jewish writers, and many other women journalists, disgusting harassment is the norm. But now, it’s scientists who are becoming a primary target; a chilling new article in The Boston Globe…
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Culture A Jewish poet of survival, Louise Glück is an incredibly timely Nobel choice
For new readers and longtime readers, one of the great pleasures of Glück’s work is following her progression as a poet
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Culture Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has a Biblical precedent
President Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis and subsequent quarantine has got me thinking about the dramatic life of Uzziah, King of Judah, who contracted tsara’at — traditionally translated as leprosy, and who is described in II Chronicles as making a power grab that led to contracting a contagious disease that required quarantine. Uzziah’s reign, from c. 791–739…
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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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