It’s important to work with students to view the difference between the existential and cognitive modes  as a difference in emphasis rather than mutually exclusive.Halbertal demonstrates the interconnection between cognitive and existential faith with the example of two people who make a business deal without a contract. Ultimately, they have faith in one another as a kind of trust and commitment, but that faith is itself based on a cognitive assertion, that the character and previous behavior of the person means they are unlikely to cheat. He distinguishes between “belief in” and “belief that.” To put this distinction in the terms that we have been speaking about, Rambam and Semag say that we should have “belief that a Creator exists, and that this Creator at some point in history made a commitment to the Jewish people by taking them out of Egypt, and that an event occurred in which God revealed the Torah to the Jewish people at Sinai.” The existential model says: Given that that is true, I have certain feelings (warm embrace) and commitments (keeping mitzvot, working for the betterment of the Jewish people and the world) because of a sense that my existence and behavior is worthwhile and important.