Shai Held
Teaching The Heart Of Torah In A Heartless Time
Imagine a Jewish institution with four presidents. Now imagine that they all complement each other and seem to get along brilliantly. That’s Mechon Hadar, a traditional, egalitarian yeshiva in Manhattan founded a decade ago by friends from Harvard University searching to create a new place to study, worship and build Jewish community. It has grown in the past decade into a Manhattan institution, offering seminars, fellowships and grants.
Among Mechon Hadar’s founding core, it was Rabbi Shai Held’s prophetic voice we heard most clearly this year.
Held’s compilation of his weekly Torah interpretations was published in a two-volume set in September, titled “The Heart of Torah.” In it, he wrote: “The Torah we learn and teach should help us become kinder, more generous, more empathetic and willing to give; if it merely buttresses our biases and hardens our hearts, then it is simply not Torah.”
His theological belief that God wants us to live lives of compassion and dignity naturally extended into the political realm after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Held, 46, became an outspoken critic of the new administration, preaching at a prayer service before the Women’s March in January, penning columns for CNN and sharing his views regularly on Facebook. “Racism is an attack on humanity,” he wrote after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, “but it is also an assault on God.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
