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 So, How Do You Observe Shabbat In Reykjavik?
Shabbat lasts three days in Reykjavik, Iceland, as I discovered when I found myself there for a writing conference. Shabbat began at 11:16 p.m. on Friday night, according to Chabad’s ever-helpful online calendar that lists candle-lighting times around the world, and finally ended at 1:27 on Sunday morning. Travelers to Iceland in summer often remark…
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Culture Why Do People Call Arson ‘Jewish Lightning’ — And Is It Anti-Semitic?
A highly-specific act of insurance fraud, explained.
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Culture What Do The Talmud And Torah Really Say About Trump’s Lies?
We are living in an age when world leaders regularly deny historical facts — and therefore, defining what the word “lie” means is an urgent concern. It’s also an ancient concern. Both the Torah and the Talmud seem a bit clairvoyant these days in their interest in delineating what a lie is, when it’s okay…
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Culture Israel’s Book Fair Cuts Are Devastating To Readers
Forty communities in Israel, all located far away from major cities, will not be participating in this year’s Shavua HaSefer, or “Week of the Book” program due to funding cuts — and the news has prompted an outcry from writers and community leaders who say this will be devastating to readers. Shavua HaSefer, a program…
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Culture How Did John Steinbeck And An Obama Staffer Get The Bible So Wrong?
Working for Barack Obama can be a career maker, but Hebrew readers have been puzzled by the explanation for the path that one former staffer took. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Michael Slaby, whom the newspaper described as “among the key tech gurus for Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns,” has founded a startup called Timshel…
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Fast Forward Booker Nominations For Oz and Grossman Bring Out Anti-Semitic Trolls
The tiny but close-knit world of Hebrew translation is cheering for David Grossman and Amos Oz and their respective translators, Jessica Cohen and Nicholas de Lange — but the anti-Semites on Twitter are jeering, and Amos Oz’s daughter stepped into the fray this morning with a pithy response. Grossman’s novel, “A Horse Walks into a…
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Culture Why It’s So Hard To Be A Kushner In The Age Of Jared And Ivanka
People used to be curious about my first name, but now, everyone wants to know the real deal with my last name. Specifically — am I related to Jared Kushner? The short answer: no. I am also not related to other famous Kushners: Tony, for instance. Or Rabbi Harold. Or France’s famed Bernard Kouchner. Or…
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Culture Remembering The Man Who Translated The Holocaust’s Most Haunting Poem
John Felstiner, the distinguished translator and literary scholar who brought Paul Celan into English and who also translated Pablo Neruda, will be remembered at a memorial at Stanford University today. Felstiner taught at Stanford for nearly fifty years, in English, Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature. He is the author of an essential biography of Celan,…
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