Community Scholar Program (CSP) One Month Scholar Closing Session
Finding God in Nature and Torah: Exploring Psalm 19 {Rabbi Shai Held}

Do we find God in the beauty and majesty of the natural world or in the power and delight of Torah? Do we discover a different kind of God in each place? What is the book of Psalms’ attitude towards nature worship? In this session, we’ll do an extremely close literary and theological reading of Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God”), part of Pesukei DeZimra for Shabbat and Yom Tov, and ask how it works with and subverts ideas about God from the ancient Near East.

Do we find God in the beauty and majesty of the natural world or in the power and delight of Torah? Do we discover a different kind of God in each place? What is the book of Psalms’ attitude towards nature worship? In this session, we’ll do an extremely close literary and theological reading of Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God”), part of Pesukei DeZimra for Shabbat and Yom Tov, and ask how it works with and subverts ideas about God from the ancient Near East