Empowering young people to inherit, examine, and carry forward the ideas, values, and debates shaping Jewish and democratic life.
Passing the Torch is the overall home for two connected projects: Sapir Youth Group Videos and The Night Watch Podcast. Both ask young people to inherit serious Jewish ideas actively, not passively, through reading, conversation, memory, and honest inquiry.
The Sapir youth discussions begin with essays from one of the most respected journals of contemporary Jewish thought. The Night Watch extends that work into podcast conversations about identity, antisemitism, Zionism, faith, history, culture, and the responsibility of remembrance.
Together, they treat intellectual inheritance as practice: not preservation in amber, but a torch handed off, examined, and held aloft.
What does it mean to be a "chosen people"? Students examine the theological and historical roots of the idea, the burdens it places on those who claim it, and what it asks of Jews in the contemporary world.
A close reading of a contemporary Sapir essay on anti-Zionism: its rhetorical moves, its historical antecedents, and the case for a clear-eyed Jewish response. Students bring their own reading of the source text to the table.
A podcast conversation connected to the questions Passing the Torch is built to explore, extending the work into reflection, memory, and cultural analysis.
Each student reads the assigned Sapir article and reviews the discussion questions before arriving.
The session opens with framing: the article, its author, and the questions that will guide the conversation.
Students work through carefully prepared questions tied to the article, surfacing disagreement and refining their reading.
The floor opens for one carefully chosen question from the audience, broadening the conversation outward.
The session closes by asking how to live out the values, drawn from the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, that the article surfaces.
Sapir publishes essays from scholars, journalists, writers, and leaders examining the questions that shape Jewish life today.
Sapir is a journal devoted to serious, intellectually diverse conversation about Jewish identity, culture, politics, religion, antisemitism, Israel, and the future of Jewish life. Its work draws Jewish tradition into direct contact with the moral and political questions of the present moment.
The Sapir Youth Group Videos under Passing the Torch are built around that work, taking individual articles as the starting point for the next generation's own engagement.
About Jewish identity and the future of Jewish life, without timidity or evasion.
A wide range of viewpoints, deliberately convened to foster thoughtful disagreement.
Antisemitism, education, polarization, and the bond between Diaspora and Israel.
Drawing on Jewish texts, history, and philosophy to think about modern questions.
Strengthening the leaders, writers, and thinkers who carry Jewish life forward.
Among those whose work appears in the journal: scholars, journalists, statesmen, and writers shaping the conversation:
A discussion-based podcast exploring Jewish identity, memory, moral courage, and the ideas shaping the next generation.
The Night Watch is a podcast and media project under Passing the Torch, centered on Jewish ideas, moral courage, culture, history, and the responsibility of remembrance. Inspired by the image of watchmen guarding a light through darkness, it brings together students, guests, and young thinkers for conversations about identity, antisemitism, Zionism, faith, and the future of the Jewish people.
Rather than fast-paced debate, The Night Watch emphasizes thoughtful dialogue and reflection. Episodes often expand on themes from the Sapir youth discussions, connecting philosophy, current events, and historical memory to the experiences of a new generation.
The title symbolizes vigilance: staying awake intellectually and morally in moments when apathy, forgetting, or extremism threaten to darken public life. At its core, The Night Watch is about keeping the flame alive through conversation, memory, and honest inquiry.
Staying awake to the pressures of apathy, forgetting, and extremism.
Slower dialogue that gives students, guests, and young thinkers room to develop serious ideas.
Connecting Jewish history and remembrance to current events, identity, and public life.
Watch every session, in full, as it was recorded.
Watch the 10:19 podcast episode.
The journal's own YouTube channel, a companion library of discussion.