“What is alarming to me is the attitude of ‘NevilleChaimBerlin’ that has become pretty mainstream- disqualifying anyone who and anything that does not conform to the (extreme) chareidi line. “
While I often find NevilleChaimBerlin’s opinion to be extreme, here he is saying nothing extreme. Like it or not, we judge people by the company they keep, especially when they are there for decades. Beside which, we all have our “red lines” which we say is too much. When there is wholesale abandonment of Mitsvot and denial of Torah min hashamayim, that should be any Orthodox person’s minimum red line to say that’s not Orthodox.
If Heschel joined JTS supposedly before it went OTD, I could somewhat justify his staying there. But first he went to the Reform HUC, which had already thrown off Torah and Mitsvot for years. Like, what was he thinking?
Even at JTS, it was just a few years later that they “mattired” Chillul Shabbat. That did not happen in a vacuum. It’s not like they were following halacha l’mahadrin and then just said, hey let’s drive on Shabbat. They obviously were on a spiritual plummet from smaller breach to larger breach.
Maybe Heschel thought he could mekarev them. I can’t comment so well as I am not in his shoes, but if that was his intention, he clearly failed. In fact he clearly failed to see how he would fail.