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
Guide to Hosting a Sapir Salon
We know you love a great conversation. We do, too.
That’s why we’re inviting you to host your own SAPIR Salon and join a like-minded community of different-minded thinkers.
How? It’s easy. After the release of each issue, gather a few friends for thought-provoking and meaningful conversations around the essays featured in the journal. You can host one in your living room, at a nearby park, or anywhere where you feel most comfortable having a rich discussion. We invite you to join SAPIR Salons Facebook Group to create or join a community near you.
Use the guide below and let the good conversations roll!
Be sure to email us at salons@sapirjournal.org with 1) a photo of your SAPIR Salon in-action and 2) an insightful takeaway from the conversation. We will feature a select number of submissions in one of our newsletters soon after the issue’s launch.
Recommended articles to get your conversation started
- Stephens begins by observing that, in 2026, the Jewish community is experiencing an unprecedented paradox: “In many ways, we are as powerful as we’ve ever been. Yet we are also at one of the lowest ebbs of our influence.” Do you agree?
- Is it necessarily a bad thing for Jews to lose influence or is it simply a natural evolution of history as various cultures enter and assimilate into America?
- Is there something the Jewish community could have done differently to protect its influence from eroding?
- Stephens presents the example of Bill Ackman as a person who successfully traded in his power (as a major donor at Harvard) for influence in the public sphere. Yet for every person like Ackman, there are many others who would rather not seek out public confrontations with powerful institutions. How do you think Ackman made his calculation? If you were in his shoes, would you have done the same thing?
- In closing, Stephens offers a piece of philanthropic advice: “The point of investing Jewishly is to nurture, sustain, and inspire Jews for whom Jewishness is the centering fact of their lives.” Is Jewishness the centering fact of your life? If so, have you tried to pass it on to future generations? And if not, what is it that draws you to being Jewish?
- Where do you get the news? How has your media diet evolved over the course of your life? Has it been for the better?
- In Kaufmann’s assessment, “there is little cause for alarm” about antisemitic online influencers. His analysis focuses on how individual figures haven’t triggered substantial shifts in listeners’ political views of Jews and Israel. Are you surprised by his findings? Have you seen evidence to support or refute this claim?
- To explain present-day political fragmentation, Kaufmann gestures toward the widening appeal of conspiracism, “a transgressive, magical, recreational orientation that cuts across feelings toward groups.” He warns against interpreting “belief in Jewish conspiracies … as primarily motivated by Jew-hatred.” Do you agree? When it comes to harming the Jewish community, does this distinction matter?
- Kaufmann considers social media culture “exaggerated and relatively divorced from the off-screen reality.” Is this true? Ten or 20 years down the road, will it be easier or harder to draw this line?
- Which influencers do you see on social media? As you scroll through your feed, have you witnessed the same types of tone-deaf missteps and provocations that Kaplowitz describes? Is it possible for influencers to rise to fame and capture your attention without being provocative and inflammatory?
- Kaplowitz slams the wave of influencers who eagerly turn “Jewish anguish into personal capital.” But these influencers’ livelihoods are dependent on making it in the attention economy, and many of them likely follow the adage, attributed to P.T. Barnum, that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” How can the Jewish community check the voices of online influencers who often appear to speak on its behalf?
- Instead of centering influencers, Kaplowitz argues that “we should put scholars and inspiring heroes back at the center and also commission projects from leading researchers and historians to gather and preserve more October 7 testimony that will still matter when this week’s outrage is forgotten.” Why is it harder for these types of projects to gain traction? Have you supported or participated in any of them? Does it leave a different type of emotional and communal impact than online content?
- Do you find yourself addicted to social media? Have you ever been? How do you try to reverse the magnetic pull of a screen?
- Kaplowitz argues that “social media has decentralized the distribution of information and has granted that privilege to a class of models, reality-television stars, and pranksters in place of the serious journalists, analysts, and historians who once were the gatekeepers.” In other words, populism reigns on social media. What does that mean for Jews and Israel?
- Bellow champions “the continuing power of books to change minds and influence social and political outcomes.” Have you read many books this year? Do you read more or less than you used to?
- Do books still carry a high level of prestige? Does reading?
- Bellow’s argument seems to rest on the thesis that politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from books. Do you agree? On a personal level, do you think the origins of your core beliefs can be traced back to the written word?
- Can America have a national culture without books?
- Jewish life has been dependent on textual transmission since Moses descended from Sinai. What would it mean to be Jewish in a world where ever fewer people read books?
Resources for Past Issues
