Modern Jewish Literature

This summer, Aviva will explore the richness of modern Jewish culture through reading Israeli, European and American literature.

This term’s books will include ‘The First Mrs Rothschild’ by Sara Aharoni, ‘The World Without You’ by Joshua Henkin, ‘And the Bride Closed the Door’ by Ronit Matalon and ‘My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner’ by Meir Shalev.

Aviva teaches Jewish Culture and Holocaust Studies at the University of Roehampton. Her sequence of poems about clearing her mother's hoarded home won the 2017 Primers Prize and were featured on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. 

She is well known in the Jewish community, where she lectures internationally on Jewish arts and culture. From 2014–2016, she was Poet in Residence at the Jewish Museum London and these poems received a research award for International Jewish Women in the Arts from the HBI Institute at Brandeis University.