And they saw the God of Israel: Under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity.
—Exodus 24:10
Sapir is a journal exploring the future of the American Jewish community and its intersection with cultural, social, and political issues. It is published by Maimonides Fund with Bret Stephens serving as Editor-in-Chief.
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Notable & Quotable
Sapir is, to my mind, one of the very best, most thoughtful, Jewish publications in English today, and Sapir has of late been addressing issues related to this unprecedented time in Jewish history.
Sapir was founded to bring ideas to life. Check out eJewish Philanthropy’s coverage of how a 2023 article by our editor-in-chief Bret Stephens inspired a new center in Atlanta. A SAPIR essay imagined ‘Jewish thriving.’ Atlanta’s Dupree built it a home. New center for adult Jewish education aims to serve as a hub for the […]
Check out Jewish Insider’s writeup of the latest Sapir Debate! Trump official and Brookings scholar clash over campus antisemitism crackdown The debate comes amid a yearslong campaign by the Trump administration to pressure universities to crack down on antisemitism — an effort that has included federal funding cuts affecting dozens of schools Israel on Campus Coalition […]
In 2025, SAPIR marked its fifth year with issues on the timely themes of Diversity, Activism, Chosenness, and Money. As the year draws to a close, we look back at some the most sharply argued and provocative SAPIR articles, from contributors including Toba Hellerstein, Meir Y. Soloveichik, Robert P. George, and Malka Shaw. Dive back […]
Sapir curated the below selection of articles from our back issues as a resource for concerned parents. We hope you will find this helpful for conversations with your peers, your schools, and others. If you would like help collecting articles on a particular theme from our catalogue, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. […]
In a powerful piece for the Washington Post, Mark Lasswell cited Yoni Heilman’s war diary published in Sapir. Read the full piece here, and revisit Heilman’s multi-part diary here.
Sapir was proud to see Michael Oren’s recent piece on what happens after the war highlighted in the New York Post and The Free Press. Israel war: The Day After the End Israelis “want to know how, apart from defeating Hamas” their nation “defines victory. What, they ask, does the day after look like,” notes Michael […]
Maimonides Fund is opening an in-house institute to turn ideas generated by its quarterly Sapir Journal into viable plans of action, tapping Chanan Weissman, a former two-time White House liaison to the American Jewish community, as its director, the organization announced on Wednesday. According to Maimonides Fund President Mark Charendoff, the impetus for Sapir Institute […]
With our new issue on Culture (Volume Eight, Winter 2023), we mark two full years of Sapir. And with it, we are excited to unveil a newly redesigned website, with a fresh look and many more ways to explore all of our content. When we launched Sapir, our intent was for it to be a limited run […]
In response to our Cancellation issue, we’ve been asked about organizations and resources related to promoting more constructive discourse inside and outside Jewish spaces. Below is a sampling of nonprofits doing such work.
Education is the central theme of the sixth issue of Sapir. What makes for a great Jewish education? Does meritocracy harm or help America — and what does Judaism tell us about the real nature of merit? How do we cultivate the habits of a free mind in increasingly illiberal educational environments? Articles on these […]
We affirm Gil Troy and Natan Sharansky’s strong statements [in Sapir Volume 4: Can a Year in Israel Transform Your Teen?] about the importance of a gap year experience and their vision of an expansion into a “universal gap year.” As we at Young Judaea celebrate our 70th year as one of the largest non-Orthodox gap year providers, we […]
We are pleased to announce the fourth issue of Sapir: A Journal of Jewish Conversations. Centered around the theme of aspiration, articles will be released beginning on January 24th via Jewish Insider. For this issue we asked ourselves, “What is a Jewish moonshot?” We wanted our moonshots to be audacious but also achievable, with a […]
You are the editor of Sapir, a new quarterly journal of Jewish ideas published by the Maimonides Fund. How’s that going, and what’s the theme of the next one? It’s now a permanent thing. We started with the idea of four issues on four big topics. We’ve done social justice, power, and continuity, and the theme of […]
We are pleased to announce the third issue of Sapir: A Journal of Jewish Conversations. Centered around the theme of continuity, articles will be released beginning on October 28th via Jewish Insider. Publisher Mark Charendoff introduces the volume by asking: Is “continuity” worth redeeming? The term seems unimportant, but the discussion it prompted in the […]
“Many of the Sapir authors offer different perspectives on the complexity and nuances of Jewish power, recognizing that power is deeply flawed and requires self-critique, while reminding us that possessing power and agency is essential to human, and Jewish dignity and self-determination. As a People, while the purity of powerlessness can be enticing – freeing us […]
We are pleased to announce the second issue of Sapir: A Journal of Jewish Conversations. Centered around the theme of power, articles will be released beginning on July 26th via Jewish Insider. Publisher Mark Charendoff introduces the volume, writing that “a more substantive and thoughtful reckoning with the complexity of power seemed a worthy endeavor […]
The powerful, incisive essays and the conversations they prompted can be seen as geared toward those in American Jewish leadership positions who are facing increasingly hostile anti-Jewish viewpoints from their mostly Jewish patrons and partners. The articles could then provide both information and inspiration for those who wish to address these viewpoints head on. “There […]
Dr. Einat Wilf’s article “How Not to Think About the Conflict” has been published in Spanish.
Matti Friedman’s article “Eight Tips for Reading About Israel” has been published in Spanish and Hebrew.
In this barrenness of ideas, there is nonetheless good news. One particular movement, incipient as it may be, gives me special hope: The re-emergence of Jewish journals of ideas. In the last few months, a number of journals have come out; in them, people can discuss ideas in long format, without the tyranny of the […]
Maimonides Fund is pleased to announce the launch of Sapir: A Journal of Jewish Conversations. Sapir is a limited-run journal. It will include four issues exploring different themes, to be released quarterly over the course of the coming year, with Bret Stephens serving as Editor-in-Chief and Felicia Herman as Managing Editor. It is published by […]