Berkeley Hillel hosted “The God Talk” at Li Ka Shing Center on Monday, drawing about 90 attendees.

Chancellor Rich Lyons was among the three panelists discussing belief in God, academic expertise and the intersection of the two. The panel included Executive Dean of the College of Letters & Science Jennifer Johnson-Hanks and Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences professor Shafi Goldwasser. Goldwasser is also the director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing.

Outside in the lobby, seven protesters held signs reading “Zionism is fascism” and “Hillel is complicit in the Gaza Holocaust,” among other messages.

“We are here today … to call into the light the hypocrisy of this event taking place while a genocide continues in Palestine, while a war is waged in Iran and while bombs drop in Lebanon,” said an anonymous protester from Jewish Voice for Peace, a campus Jewish anti-Zionist organization.

Some members of Jewish Voice for Peace have allegedly been blacklisted from Hillel, according to the anonymous protester.

[EMBED PROTEST PHOTO] FROM ANNABELLE

This is the first year that “The God Talk” has been open to the wider campus community, according to campus sophomore Pearl Werbach, a student event organizer.

The discussion was guided by Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman.

Among other topics, Naftalin-Kelman asked the panelists when they felt closest to God, how injustice under God’s watch can be explained, and whether God, or “the divine,” has a place in the classroom.

The speakers expressed both agreement and disagreement throughout the event.

“I can, in some sense, bring God into a classroom, or any of us can, by distributing dopamine hits to people in that class (by) saying, ‘That’s a cool idea,’ and that feels kind of godly,” Lyons said, regarding the question of God’s place in the classroom.

Goldwasser noted that “aha” moments and a general passion for learning are where godliness can be found.

Berkeley Hillel plans to host “The God Talk” next year as well, according to Werbach.

“Belief in God and spirituality can obviously be an uncomfortable, awkward and tense conversation (and inevitably will be at times), and yet we’ve had Nobel laureates, and now the chancellor, all so happy to be a part of it,” Werbach said in a text message.