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 Volkswagen Can Change Its Language — But Not Its History
The German foundation Deutsche Sprache (“German Language”) announced Thursday that it had sold all its shares in Volkswagen, after the carmaker announced plans to switch its official language from German to English. “The words ‘Volkswagen’ and ‘German language’ will no longer fit together,” the foundation’s executive spokesman Walter Krämer said in a statement objecting to…
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Culture Remembering Dan Pagis 30 Years After His Death
The widely-admired poet Dan Pagis, famous for his haunting poems of the Holocaust, was the subject of a special memorial conference at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva, Israel. A Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who died in 1986 at age fifty-six, Pagis was also an important scholar of medieval Hebrew literature. The conference, which took place entirely in…
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Culture Why ‘Farkakt’ Is Only One of Many Words That Describes 2016
Dictionary editors and cultural denizens are scrambling to come up with a single word to describe the craziness of 2016 — and some are turning to Yiddish for ideas. After flirting with “fascism” as a possibility, Merriam-Webster went with “surreal,” which it defines as “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream.” The word…
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Culture 70 Years Later, We’re Still Debating Jean-Paul Sartre and Anti-Semitism
Scholars from around the world convened in Jerusalem this week for a conference marking the 70th anniversary of the publication of Jean-Paul Sartre’s influential “Anti-Semite and Jew.” Originally published in French as ”Réflexions Sur la Question Juive” and translated widely, the book-length essay was written just after Paris was liberated in 1944. The English translation…
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Culture Why David Friedman Is So Wrong To Call J Street Liberals ‘Kapos’
Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has called Jews with left-leaning political views “far worse than kapos.” It’s a highly-charged word, to say the least, and discussion of Friedman’s word choice — kapoim in Hebrew — is blaring from the radio on Israeli buses. I heard a radio host explain Friedman’s use…
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Culture Do You Think Differently When You Write in Another Language?
One afternoon, when I was 22, I nervously asked my boss if I could attend a French writing workshop at the Alliance Française each week — during work hours. It was my first job out of college, and I worked as a copy editor at a daily financial newspaper covering the municipal-bond market. I was…
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Culture What’s the Word of 2016? Hint: It’s Not Mishegas
Think you’re hearing a little more Yiddish along with the news of the latest Trump drama? You may not be imagining. Charles Blow used schlepped in the first sentence of his widely shared column “No Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along,” kicking it off with the classic “Donald Trump schlepped across town on Tuesday to…
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Culture What AP Gets Wrong About the Alt-Right — And What We Can Do About It
Copy editors around the world are struggling to write headlines that are accurate in a rapidly changing political landscape, and many are getting flak for calling white racists and anti-Semites what they are now calling themselves: “the alt-right.” Normally, calling someone what they call themselves — such as “environmental activist” — is reasonable, and if…
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