Hecht Family Crowdsources the High Holidays

A unique yearly gathering at the NCFJE headquarters in Crown Heights was the subject of this feature article, which appeared in both the online and print editions of the Wall Street Journal, written by associate editor Bari Weiss. At the meeting, dozens of rabbis, all members of the distinguished Hecht family, share their best ideas for a Yom Kippur sermon with the rest of their kin:

Yom Kippur is the most important date on the Jewish calendar. So in advance of the High Holy Day service, rabbis around the world sometimes pick each other’s brains to make sure they deliver on the year’s most important sermon. The rabbis in the Hecht family have an advantage: They have more than 125 brains to pick.

The Rabbis Hecht serve as pulpit rabbis, run schools and head charities. There’s a scribe in the bunch, and a shohet, a ritual slaughterer. All are members of Chabad, the Hasidic movement famous for its outreach efforts on the streets of Manhattan, the hills of Nepal and any place with a Jew in between. Likewise, Hechts span the globe—hosting Sabbath dinners each week from Hanoi to the Rio Grande Valley—though the majority live in the New York area, where they have been for six generations. “Hecht is the largest last name in our directory,” says Motti Seligson, director of media relations of Chabad.org, “And that’s not counting the guys that married into the family.”

“One Jew got on a boat in the 1880s. We’re all here. That’s it,” as Rabbi Shmully Hecht, who runs the Eliezer Jewish Society at Yale University, summed up his family history. That one Jew, Hirsh Meilich Hecht from Leżajsk, Poland, and his wife, Ita Drezel, had five daughters and two sons; the younger son went on to have six sons—all of whom became rabbis. The “six brothers,” as they are known within the family, collectively had 41 children. Today, they and their children and their grandchildren are proudly continuing the family business.

What December is for retail, early fall is for rabbi-ing. Thus, in a manner similar to the Vatican’s College of Cardinals—well, not exactly—the Hechts gather every year at 824 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to swap sermons. This year I joined the family conclave. I was told to bring “Advil and oxygen.” Wise advice.

Sitting around a large wooden table in a windowless room—once an office of one of the family’s patriarchs—were 25 rabbis. Most of the rest—another 54 Hechts—called in from cities including Bangkok, Edinburgh and Capetown. The 23-year-old Rabbi Yankel Raskin was the youngest, a member of the family’s seventh generation. The oldest, at 68, and unofficial master of ceremonies, was Rabbi Sholom Ber Hecht.

The rules were laid out: Each rabbi gets three minutes to convey his best material. I was skeptical, for reasons voiced by Rabbi Asher Hecht from McAllen, Texas: “You have to understand, you have 100 rabbis keeping it to three minutes—it’s a miracle!”

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