Unfortunately, Rabbi Shai Held has had to cancel his upcoming visit to Seattle so this event will no longer be taking place. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

What do we mean when we say “God”? Are we talking about an abstract, distant, unknowable being? A personal God who loves and cares about us? Something else entirely? In this session, we’ll explore the very different ways two of Judaism’s greatest thinkers – Maimonides and Abraham Joshua Heschel – thought about God, and ask what we might learn for our own spiritual and religious quests.

Rabbi Shai Held is Co-Founder, Dean and Chair in Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar. Shai also directs Mechon Hadar’s Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas, for which he has written over a year’s worth of weekly divrei Torah on the parashah. Previously, he served for six years as Scholar-in-Residence at Kehilat Hadar in New York City, and taught both theology and Halakha at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Shai holds a doctorate in religion from Harvard; his main academic interests are in modern Jewish and Christian thought and in the history of Zionism. His book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence was published by Indiana University Press in 2013.