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 How To Deconstruct The Graffiti In Tel Aviv’s Hippest Neighborhood
Florentin, a neighborhood full of artists, hipsters, mom-and-pop businesses, lighting stores and quirky home-décor emporiums, is Tel Aviv’s answer to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg — at least before it gentrified entirely. It’s also a great place to check out graffiti that reveals Israel’s political pulse. Most of the graffiti is in Hebrew, and a lot of it…
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Culture In Israel, Even The Dogs Dress Up For Purim
In Tel Aviv, Purim is not just a holiday for humans. Plenty of dogs are decked out in fashionable costumes. One dog I saw was dressed like a lion. The dog-lion attracted claps and whistles from passersby. Another more feminine dog wore a headband with a pink sequined bow, and still another had an elaborate…
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Culture Here’s One Way To Fight The Gender Gap In Literature
Just in time for International Women’s Day, The University of Warwick in the United Kingdom announced that it is establishing an annual £1000 prize for women in translation — prompting elation from writers, translators and translation activists who are working hard to close the gender gap in international literature. The Warwick Prize for Women in…
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Culture How One Israeli Grocery Bag Solves A Vexing Dating Dilemma
Ever wish you could tell at a glance if someone was single or not? A Tel Aviv convenience-store has a novel solution to this problem. Tel Aviv is known for its nightlife and its large number of single residents, but Israel itself is a family-centric culture. The divide between solo freedom and traditional home life…
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Culture How Can Such An Unpopular President Deliver Such Popular Sentences?
Donald Trump is apparently more popular at the sentence level than he is as a person or as a President, according to an intriguing new poll released today by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News. The poll of 1000 adults, polled February 18-22, found that a whopping 86 percent approved of this line from…
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Culture Why Israeli Children Need To Learn Arabic at an Earlier Age
Every street sign in Israel is in Hebrew and Arabic, but many Israelis can’t understand a standard conversation in Arabic. In a moving letter to Haaretz written this week by Lital Lam, a student at Tel Aviv University, headlined “Israelis, Speak Arabic,” Lam expresses the alienation she feels because she does not speak Arabic fluently….
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Culture How Marie Antoinette and Sean Spicer Are Making Babka Famous
Bomb threats against JCCs throughout the U.S. are bringing many reactions, but none tastier than this tweet from The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in response to Presidential spokesman Sean Spicer’s bizarre insistence that Donald Trump has spoken out against anti-Semitism many times: Spicer @WhiteHouse says about our org: “No matter how many times…
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Culture Could a Few Good Short Stories Save The Trump Presidency?
In Peter Orner’s new book, “Am I Alone Here? Notes on Living To Read and Reading To Live,” he admits that he reads in taquerias, at traffic lights and “in part, to get away from email.” Illustrated by the cartoonist Eric Orner, the author’s brother, the unusual and deeply personal book is being passed hand-to-hand…
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