My father’s first cousin, Rabbi Professor Neil Hecht, recently passed away. Cousin Neil (as my father, Rabbi Professor Michael Hecht, always called him), was a scholar, a lamdan, a leader, and man of humility and service.
He graduated as the highest-ranking student and valedictorian of Yeshiva College with a major in philosophy in 1954, and with a host of awards in academics and athletics (he fenced), in ethics and character, in international relations and debating. He earned semicha from RIETS, followed by a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an LL.M. and J.S.D. from Columbia University School of Law. Thus he was primed for his life’s work, bridging Jewish and secular law and charting a path for numerous students to follow.
For 50 years he was a professor at Boston University School of Law, where he was a beloved professor, and for 30 years he was founding director of its Institute of Jewish Law.
As a child I remember my father consulting his many books and articles, including Jewish Jurisprudence, written together with Emanuel Quint in 1980, which I just borrowed from my father’s library, since its revival (2023) is currently selling for $120.
He wrote many treatises, volumes of Jewish law, articles, encyclopedic works and compendia and was one of the first to distill and bring Jewish law to a secular law school. Some of those who have followed in similar footsteps include my dear friend Professor Chaim Saiman, my teachers and mentors Rabbi Professor Saul Berman, Professor Moshe Halbertal, Professor Suzanne Last-Stone, and many more.
He was a mensch of the highest order, and despite the size of our family, and distance from New York to Boston, I am lucky to have gotten to know his children, and grandchildren through our SAR High School and Camp Moshava connections, and to have taught Torah to his granddaughters, and tennis to his grandson. The depth of relationship with family was clear to anyone who spoke to them, and him. He was a father and grandfather who loved and was loved.
Some of his professional notes, awards and accomplishments include:
From 1985 to 1986 he was the Visiting Gruss Professor of Talmudic Civil Law at New York University law school, a chair now held by Professor Halbertal.
He served as co-director of the Joint Project in Jewish Legal Bioethics, a collaborative initiative of the Institute of Jewish Law and Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
He was honored by the Ashmolean Museum of University of Oxford, which has a plaque next to its Greek Metrological Relief recognizing his published solution, based upon Jewish law, to a long-standing riddle surrounding the statue.
Yeshiva University awarded him its Centennial Rabbinic Award in 1986 and its Bernard Revel Memorial Award in 1981.
When he retired the faculty of Law at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem published a festschrift in his honor (The Jewish Law Annual, volume 19) honoring him as “A Man of Vision and Action.”
Looking at the list of his volunteer, board, Jewish communal and educational initiatives and accomplishments, coupled with his deep humility, he really was a man of vision and action. He did not announce this work to the world. He just did what he felt needed to be done.
He was a trailblazer in the world of Jewish legal scholarship and worked to find it a place in the secular legal academy. For that we – his relatives, legal students, lawyers, rabbis, rabbis in training – will forever be grateful.
Sending much comfort to his children Jonathan & Laurel Hecht and Sharon & Mordecai Kramer, and all the grandkids.
May his memory continue to inspire, and his work continue to make a marked difference in our world.
