Saving God from the True Believers

Can we have religious passion without Fanaticism?

A rare UK opportunity to hear Rabbi Herzl Hefter, a great modern orthodox scholar! 

Elie Jesner will chair the event

Religion speaks to some of humankind’s deepest passions and endeavours to help them make structure and meaning out of them, to utilise them in one’s quest for the Divine.  But, as the modern world shows us all too painfully, religion can also often be used to justify and promote certainty, violence and aggression.  Judaism is facing this challenge in ways that it hasn’t needed to for nearly 2000 years.  In this lecture we will plumb the depths of our tradition to find the resources and tools that can help us with this challenge.  These should also shed light on the more general question of how this balance can be maintained on a universal level.

Rabbi Herzl Hefter is the founder and Rosh Beit Midrash Har’el in Jerusalem, a beit midrash for advanced rabbinic studies for men and women. He is a graduate of Yeshiva University where he learned under the tutelage of Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveichik זצ”ל, and received smikha from Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein זצ”ל at Yeshivat Har Etzion where he studied for ten years. Rabbi Hefter taught Yoreh De’ah to the Kollel fellows at the Gruss Kollel of Yeshiva University and served as the head of the Bruria Scholars Program at Midreshet Lindenbaum. He also taught at Yeshivat Mekor Chaim in Moscow and served as Rosh Kollel of the first Torah MiZion Kollel in Cleveland, Ohio. He has written numerous articles related to modernity and Hasidic thought and was most recently a research fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. His divrei Torah and online shiurim can be accessed at www.har-el.org.