I was not commenting on which part of the interview ws most interesting or enlightening, only that it clearly expresses her surprise that others would worry about the fine points of halacha.

If she was an unknowledgeable BT visiting Mea Shearim, the surprise that such things exist might be in order, but she was a young woman who grew up in Heschel’s home (his only child) and — most certainly — was describing her experience in the “wider world,” not Meah Shearim.

In other words, a young woman who grew up in the home of a Rabbi was surprised to discover that there were those who were concerned with the details of halacha, which she had not seen in her own home.

I was not commenting on which part of the interview ws most interesting or enlightening, only that it clearly expresses her surprise that others would worry about the fine points of halacha.

If she was an unknowledgeable BT visiting Mea Shearim, the surprise that such things exist might be in order, but she was a young woman who grew up in Heschel’s home (his only child) and — most certainly — was describing her experience in the “wider world,” not Meah Shearim.

It’s one thing to be more relaxed; it’s quite another to be “surprised” that others

“Always observant, he was nonetheless insistent that we cannot live as Jews today the way we lived yesterday…There’s an expression Jewish people sometimes use. They’ll say someone is ‘strictly observant.’ It occurs to me that the word ‘strict’ just doesn’t fit my father. He was not about being strict. I’m not sure what the right expression might be, but ‘lovingly observant’ might be it. When I left home and went into the world, I discovered people were different from my family. I was surprised that some Jews who kept the Sabbath worried about fine points of Jewish law. We never did that at home. Things were so much more natural. Observance was the breath of life. It was how we lived.”

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10016

She is speaking to a Catholic, goyishe interviewer, she’s clearly trying to formulate internal jewish colloquialisms to an outsider. She sounds like many FFBs I know describing Charedi BTs or Chabadniks! I think the interview is more enlightening for the degree of arrogance and condescension she details her father receiving from the professors of the Talmudic departments and their students, the celebrated [by many LWMO fans of theirs] dissenters, who formed the core of the UTJ. Kaplan’s “Spiritual Radical” gives other unsavor examples of such behavior from people who are treated as almost aristocracy in some circles for their scholarship and personal piety and high moral stands for leaving JTS. Perhaps someone could give examples of Heschel’s similarly-mean-spirited inclination to his peers – I don’t know. It doesn’t sound as if they were willing to share peerage.

His daughter, in an interview I found on the web, describes her surprise at visiting observant families for Shabbat as a college student, in terms of the care they took as regards to the details of halacha, which she had not seen at home.

Heschel’s wife was a beautiful concert pianist, who was known to have little knowledge of, or interest in, Jewish practice. I do not believe that it would be out of line to wonder about what priority Heschel placed on ritual observance, given the choice he made as to whom he would marry and what kind of home he would have as a result.

Whether this is — or should be — a reason why MO don’t read Heschel, I cannot say.

For an MO criticism of Heschel see Heschel, Intuition, and the Halakha by marvin fox in tradition fall 1960 and Zalman Schachter Shalomi’s response in tradition spring 1961.

My point is that if G-d is in search of man, it means He is seeking out man to give him responsibility. By contrast, if man searches for G-d, then man is seeking to satisfy his own needs and desires, and he accepts religion insofar as it suits his sensual desires.

Cf. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, describing Rabbi Soloveitchik, quoting from here: “Soloveitchik regards as altogether too simple the popular notion of religious experience as one preeminently pleasing and soothing-a stream of delight and relaxation and an asylum from the frustrations of life. This conception of religion Rabbi Soloveichik deems a fraud, the result of a surrender on the part of religious thinkers to the desire of the mass of men to lose themselves in states of bliss. It also echoes Rousseau in his flight from reason, and much subsequent romanticist thought. Religion’s invitation has been misinterpreted to say: “If thou cravest peace, if thou cravest integration, make the leap of faith.” In the flight from reason and the rejection of objective truth, Rabbi Soloveichik sees the cause of the moral deterioration of contemporary man. He would prefer to see religion wedded to a cold objectivity and rationality, even though faith and reason may at times appear to conflict with one another, rather than derive religion from man’s instinctual longings.”

Similarly, we pay only mere lip-service to Rambam’s teaching in Hilkhot Avodah Zara that Avraham Avinu found G-d via reason and intellect; as Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz (in Eyes to See, Urim) and Professor Menachem Kellner (cf. here) both point out, Rambam’s explanation implies Avraham found G-d by going against authority and tradition, and instead using his critical reasoning faculties, accepting only that which was empirically evident. This is not a message Orthodoxy is comfortable with.