Can we analyze life/culture/anything, yet remain idealistically Romantic?
I read the memoir of a young ex-Hasidic woman. After essentially enlightening herself, she admits she "still found delight in Shabbos poetry." To quote David Roskies, her tateh's reaction would have been, "What?! Shikse! This is Shabbos! We bentsch likht! Poetry shmoetry. Shabbos joy is obvious!"
Perhaps her words were not chosen so carefully; they are quite dry. While I don't know completely what the young girl thought, I'd like to hope she was somewhat sincere: that yes, she does find some things about Shabbat spiritual, mystical, or maybe even unexplainable.
It goes without saying that the young girl's prose was incomparable to that of Heschel's, as was her intellect and erudition. Yet reading Heshel is to experience Shabbos joy, it is to know he experienced Shabbos joy--yet he talks cogently and academically about religious topics. Heschel finds the perfect balance between nakhes and analysis.
Maybe I should try to shlep through Derrida's ideas about "the joy of the text"; sometimes I do feel like analysis is a chore, and suffuses joy. Sometimes, however, I feel like Heschel, philosophizing about Shabbat.
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