Shai Held, Judaism, and Love
Earlier this month, Abe Socher sat down to talk with Rabbi Shai Held, who cofounded the Hadar Institute in 2006, where he now serves as president and dean.
Held’s new book: Judaism is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life makes two related polemical arguments. The first is against the internal Jewish view that Judaism is primarily about law—what Abraham Joshua Heschel called “pan-halachism.” The second is against the Old Christian claim that the God of lovingkindness is nowhere to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
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