Shai Held (born July 2, 1971) is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar institute, which he founded in 2006 with Rabbis Elie Kaunfer and Ethan Tucker.
[3] He earned a PhD from Harvard University in Religious Studies; his dissertation is titled Reciprocity and Responsiveness: Self-Transcendence and the Dynamics of Covenant in the Theology and Spirituality of Abraham Joshua Heschel.
He heads the social action program at Yeshivat Hadar, meeting with residents at The New Jewish Home in Manhattan and training students in bikkur holim (visiting the sick).
David Ellenson, then-president of Hebrew Union College, wrote in a letter of support that “Rabbi Held could easily have a career as a professor at Harvard or Yale, but has chosen instead to live his life ‘in the trenches,’ helping a generation of Jews take hold of their birthright and find ways to make Judaism meaningful, compelling, and sustaining in the twenty-first century.”[8][9] In 2013 Indiana University Press published Held's first book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence, a study of the major themes of the theologian's thought, particularly the movement from reflexive concern, where man thinks of his own needs and those of his family and community, to transitive concern, where he rises above the self to view the needs of the world from the broader perspective of God rather than his from his own ego.
As I often remind students, if being present in the face of others' pain were easy, Torah wouldn't describe it as the culmination of the religious life.”[11] Held teaches that “to cleave to God’s ways”[12] means to manifest hesed (loving kindness).