SAPIR Journal

21/07/2026

What does it mean to be a Sephardic or Mizrahi Jew in America today?

A groundbreaking study, commissioned by JIMENA and led by sociologist Mijal Bitton, offers the most comprehensive portrait yet of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish life in America, documenting the experiences, identities and traditions of a community that has long been underrepresented in mainstream Jewish discourse.

Ready to dive deeper?

🇺🇸As America continues to celebrate its 250th birthday, join Hadassah Magazine Presents for a virtual conversation with three women of Syrian, Turkish and Bukharian descent on identity, heritage and the many ways Sephardic and Mizrahi communities have shaped Jewish life in the United States.

🧿The panelists🪬

✨ Esther Levy Chehebar, author of “Sisters of Fortune” and co-host of GOLDA Girls
✨ Sarah Levin, executive director of JIMENA
✨ Rozeeta Mavashev, North America executive director of Masa Israel Journey

Moderated by Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein.

📅 July 16 | 7 PM ET
💻 Free online

Register now✨
🔗 https://your.hadassah.org/sephardicmizrahi

19/06/2026

The son of Muslim immigrants to the United States, Reihan Salam sees two ideological movements vying for prominence among American Muslims: Islamism and Third Worldism. Though often conflated, the two are better understood as entangled with one another and the immigrant experience. Understanding that entanglement is key to understanding the contemporary Muslim American experience.

Just days before his historic victory in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani gave remarks outside the Islamic Cultural ...

19/06/2026

What has America's retreat from religion meant for the nation's public character? Rabbi David Wolpe argues that it's drained the country of the humility, gratitude, and concern for others that hold a pluralistic society together. In his view, Americans haven't become secular so much as "spiritual" in their own way, and too often that way is self-centered, much the opposite of what religious spirituality teaches.

The decline of religion in America is not a private matter of belief; it is a public crisis of character. In 2025, a study revealed that th...

17/06/2026

Two retired military officers — one American, one Israeli — argue that America's military edge over China is eroding not because of spending or technology but because of its pace of learning.

For years, military doctrine in the United States and Israel rested on a powerful but flawed assumption: that clear superiority of arms wou...

17/06/2026

Political theorists have long debated what should be the driving principle of American foreign policy: realism or idealism? Eliot A. Cohen calls for an end to this false binary.

Political scientists have a great many things to answer for, and one of them is the supposed chasm between ideals and realism in American f...

16/06/2026

Are Google, AI platforms, and screen-saturated classrooms actively draining America’s pipeline of quality teachers? Caroline Bryk argues that teacher shortages and the EdTech boom are deeply linked problems.

The Jewish tradition offers many fitting metaphors for teachers. The Maharal of Prague saw teachers as sculptors of the soul. Rabbi Samson ...

16/06/2026

Historian Allen C. Guelzo argues that the vacuum left by bad history education is increasingly filled by conspiracy theories, of which antisemitism is the most virulent variety. What’s the remedy?

History was not supposed to be America’s long suit. The Founding Fathers prided themselves on the historically unprecedented nature and r...

15/06/2026

Rising antisemitism is a symptom of a wider crisis, writes David Bernstein of the North American Values Institute: the collapse of America's political center. Bernstein’s blueprint for rebuilding centrist power, from local political activism to cross-partisan leadership networks to strategic philanthropic investment in universities, rests on the conviction that a thriving American Jewish community is tied to centrist leadership.

The political contest in America today is not merely between Left and Right. The United States is going through a profound political realig...

15/06/2026

National conservatives in America, argues Roger Zakheim of the Ronald Reagan Institute, have made a fundamental error in trying to import European-style nationalism into a country whose founding creed makes it unlike any other nation on earth, particularly those where national conservatism was born. His case for the conservative internationalism of Reagan rests on a reverence for America’s national covenant. In his view, conservatives who forget that covenant are betraying the greatest Republican in American history: Abraham Lincoln.

In the lead-up to the Trump administration’s military strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program in June 2025, Tucker Carlson posted...

11/06/2026

Is the real Iran War story is about more than firepower and geopolitics? For Bret Stephens, it's civilizational: While America has slowly lost its sense of conviction in its own worth, Israelis are willing to endure the Islamic Republic’s missiles because they believe their country is worth fighting for.

As I write, in April 2026, a shaky cease-fire has been declared in the war with Iran. In the United States, most Americans welcome the idea...