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 Why The National Endowment for the Arts Is So Vital To America
President Donald Trump’s administration is considering eliminating The National Endowment for the Arts, according to a widely cited but unconfirmed report on plans for sweeping Federal budget cuts that was published in The Hill. The idea of removing the NEA has been sparking outrage in America’s artistic and literary community. “The estimated security cost for…
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Culture Why Israel’s Bestseller List Is a Threat to Hebrew Literature
Books in translation increasingly dominate Israel’s best-seller list, and some see a serious threat to Hebrew-language writers in the trend. This week’s bestseller list, published in Haaretz, includes a whopping nine titles in translation out of ten top slots in fiction sold at independent bookstores. It will take only one additional foreign bestseller to reduce…
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Culture How Publishers Are Already Taking Action Against Trump’s “Muslim Ban”
Comma Press is the first publisher to respond to the “Muslim ban” with a pledge to spend 2018 exclusively publishing work from the seven countries whose citizens are currently barred from entering the U.S. “We have decided to feature on our translation imprint only writers from the countries affected by the ban – Syria, Iraq,…
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Culture How Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Being Translated Into Other Languages
The Trump administration’s ban on Muslims from seven nations entering the country has caused mass protests at airports worldwide — but how it is being reported globally is often a matter of translation. In Italy, “they are calling it a “legge razziale” or racial law, which directly ties it to the Italian racial laws instituted…
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Culture Largest Collection of Hebrew Books Sold to Israel Library
The National Library of Israel has just acquired the largest private collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts in the world — including rare treasures such as a 1491 chumash from Lisbon, Portugal, and one of only two surviving copies of a 1556 Passover Haggadah from Prague. The complex deal for the famed Valmadonna Trust Library,…
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Culture Why Donald Trump Makes Life So Difficult For His Translators
Translators are the ultimate close readers — they consider every word, every comma, and every layer of nuance. For months, “translator Twitter” has included comments from translators around the world on the difficulty of doing “Trumpslation.” One classic question translators asked each other: how to translate “Make America Great Again” into Spanish? The Spanish newspaper…
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Culture What Does Trump’s Choice of Bibles Tell Us About Him?
President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will be sworn in using both Lincoln’s Bible and his own family Bible, given to him by his mother. The Constitution doesn’t require that a Bible be used at all. The Bible aspect of the inauguration is all about symbolism, not law. Barack Obama chose Lincoln’s Bible for…
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Culture Can the Simple Act of Writing Bring Muslims and Jews Closer Together?
I am a longtime believer in the power of writing by hand, but it took a museum exhibit in a converted mosque in Beersheba, Israel, to teach me that the bridge among Chinese culture, the Islamic world and Western civilization was made of paper. Two thousand years ago, paper was invented in China, and it…
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