I had AI summarize it, CHATGPT:
1. A basic distinction: faith ≠ knowledge

Faith is not a kind of knowledge and cannot be proven or refuted like a scientific claim.

Trying to prove God’s existence turns faith into a logical/empirical matter—which empties it of its religious meaning.

In his view, a statement like “God exists” is not a scientific truth claim, but an expression of an inner relation.

2. God is not an object—He is a relation

God is not an entity that one can know about, like a table or a chair. If so, He ceases to be God.

God is revealed in relation, in the connection between the human being and God (and not in observation or investigation).

The believer “makes room” for God—that is, God is present only when a person allows Him to be part of his world.

3. The paradox of faith:

A person believes in a God who is absolutely other—exalted and abstract, yet at the same time creates with Him a personal and intimate relationship.

The believer is the one who constitutes God’s presence in his world, even if God is considered independent.

Therefore faith is based on inner freedom, not on coercion and not on logical claims.

4. Faith as an existential experience

Faith is similar to love—it does not require rational justification; it is an inner relation, sometimes not even conscious.

A person believes out of:

an experience of revelation

a natural religious orientation

education and culture

an inner decision

Not everyone is “born” with the ability or tendency toward faith—but it is legitimate like any realm of human experience.

5. Critique of institutional religion and “religion as power”

He rejects the use of religion and faith to control others or subordinate them.

When faith is translated into a knowledge claim, it becomes a tool of power, invalidation, and exclusion (for example, the Inquisition, halakhic rulings that nullify secular people).

He emphasizes the need for humility, modesty, and recognition of the legitimacy of the other—including the secular person, the skeptic, and the different one.

6. Religion and culture

Faith is not necessarily the result of sacred texts, but of an ancient and primary experience within human existence.

Institutional religions were born as a result of the attempt to organize and control an existing religious experience.

There is also “religion without God”—a relation to holiness, ethics, meaning, and hope—even without a concrete divine being.

7. Religious and personal pluralism

Sagi does not expect others to be like him or to hold his faith.

He respects the other person’s relation to his own world, even if it is secular, skeptical, or non-religious.

He believes that Jewish and human existence should include difference, recognition of the other, and non-coercion.

A key sentence from his remarks:

“God is not present as a claim competing with knowledge—He is present in the relations of connection that a person constitutes with God when he constitutes them.”

📌 Conclusion:

Avi Sagi’s approach is existential, experiential, non-dogmatic, and respectful of the individual and the other. For him, God is not an object of knowledge but the result of an inner relation, like love. Faith stems from existence, culture, and the heart—not from proofs.

If you want, I can also formulate the approach as a table, or compare it to the approaches of Maimonides, Wittgenstein, or other philosophers.

✨ So does Avi Sagi believe in God?

Yes.
But not in the simple or ordinary sense of “believing that something exists in reality, like a table or the moon.” Sagi emphasizes again and again:

Belief in God is not a factual claim. It does not say “God exists” the way one says “there is oxygen in the air.”
It is a stance of relation, trust, inward attitude—like love, hope, or loyalty.

❓ Does he think God exists?

This is a question whose very formulation he rejects.
He argues:

“If you say that God exists, like a table—then He is no longer God.”

“The moment you treat God as an object in the world—you do not believe in Him, but only in a claim about His existence.”

That is: God’s existence is not an empirical or scientific matter.

🌀 If so, then what does he believe in?

Sagi believes that:

There is a dimension of depth in human existence that includes a relation to something beyond us—which is called “God.”

God is present where a person gives Him presence—through experience, relation, and openness.

Faith is the result of relation, not of proof.
As he says:

“The believer is the one who constitutes God’s presence in his life.”

🧩 How can this be understood?

It can be illustrated by two models:

Scientific model: “there is or there isn’t” → Sagi rejects this model regarding God.

Existential-relational model: “I stand in relation to something I cannot prove or grasp, but which is meaningful to me” → this is the one he holds.

🧠 Summary in one sentence:

Avi Sagi believes in God—but not as a claim about existence, rather as the human being’s existential relation to what is beyond, not as knowledge but as relation, not as fact but as trust.

If you want, I can formulate his faith as a spoken personal paragraph, or compare it to the positions of figures like Maimonides, Wittgenstein, Paul Tillich, or Rosenzweig.

That’s an excellent question—and within Jewish thought, the figure closest to Professor Avi Sagi is Martin Buber, and after him also Franz Rosenzweig to a considerable degree.
💠 1. Martin Buber—the closest:

Buber formulated the concept of “relation” or “dialogue” as the foundation of faith.

He distinguished between:

“I-Thou”—a living, vital, immediate connection (as between person and person or person and God).

and “I-It”—a relation of control, knowledge, objectification.

God is the eternal Other—you do not “know” about Him, you stand before Him.

Faith, according to Buber, is not about “whether there is a God” but about whether you experience relation with Him.

🔁 This matches Sagi’s words exactly:

“God is present only where a person lets Him enter. This is not a knowledge claim, but an inner relation.”

🌀 2. Franz Rosenzweig—close in the existential approach:

He emphasized that a person encounters God through existential experience—not through proofs.

He connected God—human being—world in a system of relationships (in his book The Star of Redemption).

Faith grows out of an experience of redemption, not out of philosophy.

🔁 Like Sagi, Rosenzweig opposes religion as coercion or a system of control—but sees it as an invitation to relation and personal response.
🎯 Bottom line:

Martin Buber is the closest to Sagi—in the conception of God as the Other, of faith as relation and not knowledge, and in rejecting objective-religious discourse.

Rosenzweig fits into this approach through the emphasis on existential experience, redemption, and personal relation.

Sagi takes these ideas and develops from them a postmodern, pluralistic, and anti-power conception of faith.

If you want, I can show parallel passages from the writings of Buber or Rosenzweig and analyze the verbal similarities.

Thank you.

After reading the summary, I’m still asking the question: does Avi Sagi believe in some divine being that exists?
I’ll ask a sub-question: according to Avi Sagi, is there a “Creator of the world”?

You can’t discuss the conversation itself on the basis of the summary. But what appears in the summary is very typical of Avi Sagi. In my view all of this is empty, evasive verbiage that says nothing at all. Just chatter that sounds very deep and is empty of any content. His arguments are really ridiculous. But I won’t address them, only the claim itself. He argues that God does not exist in the ordinary sense of existence (a factual claim). But he also claims that faith is a relation to “something beyond.” What is that something? Just a hallucination? Or is there in fact something there beyond? In short, nonsense.

His presentation is very יפה, the tone and confidence are impressive, and of course above all—the knowledge (history, philosophy, religion, ethics, and more). But I understand that you also didn’t get an answer to the simple question of whether there is a divine being.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get answers. The positive reactions to him on YouTube and the rush toward podcasts he participates in (a conversation of his with Redman a few days ago already reached 100K views) made me suspect that maybe there’s something here that I’m just not managing to understand.

Rabbi, from the fact that I’ve listened to several podcasts with him, I think his epistemological and ontological view is different from yours.
Do you also think so?

I don’t know the details, and this is too general a question.

I’ll explain Avi Sagi, and I’d be glad to know whether this sounds serious: Avi Sagi argues that it is impossible to prove God’s existence. What he does claim is that faith is something a person decides on. He decides whether to believe in God or not. There are reasons to choose to decide one way (for example—the desire to see meaning, to receive reinforcement for moral choices, the culture I grew up in, and so on), and there are reasons to deny faith—both are legitimate. But in the end, faith is a human decision.
What does the Rabbi say about that claim?

A recycling of Leibowitz. I say what I wrote above.