When Abraham Heschel turned to the details of the halakhah he strongly felt that there we were not dealing with divine commandments but human interpretations and that rabbinic authorities throughout the ages had made major changes.(21) So to him not all laws were equally significant; one could remove some of them without bringing the entire structure down. Man could approach God step by step and with single mitzvot without accepting the entire system.(22) Furthermore, the emphasis on all or nothing made the traditionalists, did not deal justly with the vast majority of modern Jews who had abandoned segments of Jewish life, but still considered themselves loyal Jews and were very much attached to Judaism. (23)
Heschel also made a clear division between commandments and customs or minhagim. As he felt that"Judaism does not stand on ceremonies...Jewish piety is an answer to God expressed in the language of mitzvot rather than the language of ceremonies. The mitzvah rather than the ceremony is the fundamental category." (24) For Heschel ceremonies were folkways and not particular sacred while mitzvot represented the path of God or the interpretation of the will of God . This, of course, represented a vigorous disagreement with the approach of his colleague , Mordecai Kaplan , which will be discussed later. Ultimately when Heschel looked at the whole halakhic system he felt that it was only one component albeit a major one in man’s attempt to reach out to God . For him the agadah was just as important as the halakhah. A Judaism limited solely to halakhah presented a distorted image of Judaism. (25) Perhaps it was put most beautifully in his summary:"Halakhah is the string ; agadah is