Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau / Random House, 2015), a finalist for The National Jewish Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize. She is The Forward’s language columnist and an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, and was a Howard Foundation Fellow in 2016-17.