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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Onscript. This is Matt Lynch coming to you from Regent College in Vancouver.

I want to say a quick thanks to Jason Stark and Taylor Terzik who produce this podcast without

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We'd be sunk.

So we're so grateful for both of them.

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Well, hello, on script listeners. Today, I have a special treat for you. I have Rabbi Shai

Held, who is the president and dean of Hadar Institute in New York City. He has received the

prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish and Education, sorry, Jewish education,

and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America and the Jewish Daily

Ford is one of the most 50 prominent Jews in the world. How do you get on these lists? I need to know.

I mean, I'll never be on one of these lists, but one can aspire, right? By the end of this episode,

I'll convert you, and then we'll get you on the list. Yeah, as long as we can get me on the list. I'm up for it.

Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Call of Transcendence, the Heart of Torah. And the book we're going to be talking about today, Judaism is about love. So I want to begin, shy, if I can call you that, with reading from the very last page of the book on page 385, you finish this book by telling a little story that I want to consider.

And I'll just read you here.

A midrash tells us that when the people gathered at Sinai, they stood as one person with one heart.

How? asked Rabbi Chaim Shmuelovitz, who was, was it possible for 600,000 people with a long history of conflict and combativeness to be of one heart?

When they arrived at the mountain,

...