Jerusalem (special) -- Worshipers at the Hecht Synagogue on the Hebrew University of Mount Scopus are accustomed to saying their prayers while facing west, rather than east.
That is because that is the direction of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall just a short distance away. 

To maximize the view toward the Old City, a picture window was installed at the front of the congregation. Two Holy Arks face each other on either side of the view. 

Of special interest to San Diegans is that the Hecht Synagogue was named for the family which includes brothers Marty Hecht and former U.S. Sen. Chic Hecht, R-Nev., and their sister Teedie Applebaum of San Diego. Sen. Hecht's wife, the former Gail Kahn, was raised in San Diego.  Rabbi Reuven Grodner, who heads the beit midrash program at the synagogue, said he feels a sense of awe whenever he looks out the sanctuary window or stands on a terrace of the synagogue building. "Imagine," he said, "Josephus stood on Mount Scopus and here the Romans planned the attack on Jerusalem. And there is a passage in the Talmud about Rabbi Akiva standing here on Mount Scopus ruing the ruins of the Temple."

SYNAGOGUE INTERIOR - Picture window at front of congregation affords a view to old  Jerusalem.

Three years after the 1967 "Six Day War" in which Israel captured the Old City and Mount Scopus from the Jordanians, the Hechts were approached about helping in the reconstruction of Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus. There had been considerable deterioration since the site's capture by Arab forces during Israel's 1948 Independence War. 

Marty and Tootie Hecht were visiting their son, Alan, who was studying on the new campus when they were approached by Hebrew University's legendary fundraiser and board member, Sam Rothberg, a former Seagram's Whiskey franchisee for whom HU's school for overseas students is named. 

Would the Hechts be interested in underwriting the cost of a new dormitory room? Rothberg asked them. Before they could answer, Alan, who is today a medical doctor in the Chicago area, exclaimed: "A dormitory room? Dad, there is not even a place for the fellows to daven (pray) up here. We need some kind of a little shul." 

Rothberg, a consummate fundraiser who also was a co-founder with Julian Venezky of Israel Bonds, didn't miss a beat. "We have plans for a synagogue," he told the boy's father. "Would you like to undertake that?" 

Martin Hecht said he told Rothberg, "well let me give it some thought" to which Rothberg replied: "I can give you until 7 p.m. tonight because I am leaving for London and tomorrow I am meeting with Sir Isaac Wolfson and he will take the synagogue, but I could sell him something else." 

So, Hecht said, he returned to his hotel and called his father, Louis, who then was in his 80's. Should the family undertake a commitment to raise $100,000 in matching funds to build the synagogue--or should it do something instead at perhaps the Weizmann Institute?
"Dad said 'no, Papa (the late Yaacov Hecht) would have liked this. You go ahead and do it, and we will work it out.'" 

Before committing, however, Hecht decided to telephone Rabbi Yeheskel Hartman, an Orthodox rabbi from St. Louis who was teaching at Bar-Ilan University that year. Hartman--whose younger brother Rabbi David Hartman later founded the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem--had been a friend of the Hecht family since he heard from Rabbi Lieb Heber about young Alan's bar mitzvah in the small town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
.
Heber, a Lubavitcher rabbi, had travelled from Carbondale, Ill., to Cape Girardeau every weekend for a year to get Alan ready for his bar mitzvah in the synagogue--B'nai Israel--which Louis Hecht said he had been inspired to build after touring Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus back in 1934. Under Heber's tutelage, the family became increasingly observant, eventually switching their affiliation from Conservative to Orthodox. 

Alan was such an apt student that he was able to read and chant passages and lead prayers considered to be far beyond the capacity of most 13 year-olds, Martin Hecht recalled. That a boy from a tiny synagogue in a small Midwestern town could do so well had prompted Rabbi Hartman to ask Alan to come to St. Louis to lead Orthodox services on the first anniversary of his bar mitzvah. 

After Hecht reached Hartman by telephone, the rabbi came to the King David Hotel, and told Hecht he was skeptical about Hebrew University's plans for a synagogue. "The Hebrew University will not let this be an Orthodox synagogue," he remembered Hartman saying. "Before you know it, they will have mixed seating and you will have nothing but heartaches." Hecht said he recalled replying, "no, I think we can get them to agree on that. ...We got it in writing." 

Hartman "lived to see that he was wrong on that and he was very surprised," Hecht said.
After Hecht told Rothberg and Venezky that the family would take on the challenge, a celebratory dinner was held at the Fountainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla., to announce the gift. "They didn't waste any time," Hecht chuckled. "Dad had been living in Las Vegas and he said he would pledge $50,000- $10,000 a year over a five year period. Then before we knew it, the 1973 Yom Kippur War came." 

After the war the Israeli government weighed whether its share of the matching fund--another $100,000--would be better used to build the synagogue or for other purposes. At one point, said Hecht, "I got word from them that the government said it couldn't do any more building of anything, and that we would have to find something else. And then all of a sudden it turned around, and they said yes we are going to go ahead. 

"They wanted to finish the whole campus and build it like a fortress, so that we would never give back Mount Scopus," Hecht recalled. "With an underground parking garage, it does look like a fortress."  The architect of the synagogue was Ron Carmi, who had the idea of splitting the Ark to make room for the picture window.  During the time leading up to the 1981 dedication of the synagogue, "we took dad, who was then 92," Hecht recalled. Among the dignitaries whom the older Hecht met was then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was facing an election.

HECHT SYNAGOGUE EXTERIOR resembles a fortress atop Mount Scopus, reflecting Israel's  determination to keep it.  From 1948-1967,  Mount Scopus was held by Jordanian forces.

Begin shared with the older Hecht that he thought he might lose. 

If so, the older Hecht told the prime minister, "you will open a little store and you will machen a laben (make a living). But, you are prime minister now and you will be the prime minister afterwards." 

Begin squeaked to a narrow victory, initially able to put together only a one-vote majority in the Knesset. After appearing on "Meet the Press" in New York, he met with the younger Hechts. They suggested he call their father, which he did. "Mr. Hecht," Begin told the old man, "you were right!" 

 ***
One of Marty Hecht's favorite memories about the synagogue concerned the April 5, 1990 wedding there of former Soviet "Refusenik" Evgenij Balter and Inga Kosyrskaya, who was also an immigrant to Israel. 

The couple had requested to be married in the synagogue as a special way of paying tribute to Marty's brother, Chic Hecht, who had played a key role in helping to get the Soviet Union to release some of the "Refusenik" Jews. 

Chic Hecht had been elected in 1982 to a six-year term as a United States Senator from the state of Nevada. Previously the conservative Republican had served in the Nevada Legislature as a representative of the Las Vegas area and had been a Ronald Reagan delegate to several Republican National Conventions. Like his father and brother, Chic Hecht had made his living in the clothing business. 

Sen. Hecht said after he was elected to office he and his brother Marty met on several occasions with the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson. "He said 'you must try and get the Jews out of Russia; make this your number one priority,'" Hecht recalled. "I said 'yes, rebbe, our mother was an immigrant from Russia.' He said 'Use quiet diplomacy'; those were his words to me. That works, but publicity never does." 

Hecht said the rebbe's advice proved correct, but in a way Hecht could have dreamed.
The former senator said he had incurred considerable wrath from the Jewish community for a vote he had cast at Reagan's request in favor of arms for Saudi Arabia. He said the vote largely was symbolic, providing spare parts to the Saudis over the next three to five years. 

"President Reagan said the Saudis are important because they bring stability to the region," Hecht told HERITAGE. "He was especially concerned about someone like (Iran's Ayatollah) Khomeini getting into Saudi Arabia. He said 'Saudi Arabia is not an enemy. If we lose them, we will lose Israel.'" 

In agreeing to provide the President a vote (the bill nevertheless was defeated), Hecht noted that someday he might want Reagan to return the favor. Hecht said he presented his "due bill" on the eve of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, between Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union. 

While most people remember the summit for its failure to reach an agreement on arms control, Hecht said he shall always recall it as the time when Reagan quietly presented to Gorbachev a list bearing the names of 1,200 Jewish Refuseniks whom he wanted released. 

The list had been forwarded to him by Marillyn Tallman of Chicago, an activist in the Council for Soviet Jewry who also was the sister of Irving Appelbaum (the husband of Hecht's sister, Teedie.) Hecht visited Reagan at the White House to ask Reagan to give the list to Gorbachev at their upcoming meeting. 

According to Hecht, Reagan told him afterwards that he had given the list to the Soviet leader at the beginning of the summit when the two men met alone. Hecht said that Reagan was told by Gorbachev, "as long as nothing is in the paper, there is no publicity, and we don't hear about it," Jews on the list would be quietly released. Evgenij Balter, a computer programmer, was one of the names on that list. 

Hecht said the story of the Reykjavik list has never been fully told. However, he said that he is planning to sponsor an exhibit at the Reagan Library to help document Reagan's intervention in behalf of Soviet Jews. 

* * * 
During a visit to Jerusalem last November, my wife Nancy and I toured the Hecht Synagogue and met Rabbi Grodner and four San Diego-raised college students then studying on their Junior Year Abroad--just as Alan Hecht had done so many years before. 

The students all were members of non-Orthodox congregations in San Diego, and some had been students at San Diego Jewish Academy or at San Diego Hebrew High School. They were David Feldman (Adat Ami, now merged into Ohr Shalom); Laura Moss (Congregation Beth Am); Aimee Oberndorfer (Temple Emanu-El), and Eileen Shelden (Beth Tefilah, now merged into Ohr Shalom). 

Grodner said the beit midrash program -- funded under the auspices of the Hillel center headed by Rabbi Yossie Goldman -- provides two major options for students to learn more about Judaism . They may enroll in classes or be assigned individual tutors with whom they may intensively study Jewish texts one evening a week. 

Oberndorfer, a religious studies major, said she had attended occasional lectures at the beit midrash because the subject matter was similar to what she was taking in her regular classes. "What I like is that it is always available," she said. "If I have a Monday night or whatever evening free, I know I can come in and sit on a class or listen to a lecture. There is always something available." 

Shelden said she had been attending "the pizza talk program" at the Hecht, in which "you get pizza and then have different speakers. I have heard different rabbis speak; in fact, I just came from one in which the rabbi is also a musician. He came and gave a show. I also have been doing a class on the (Jewish) holidays." 

Moss and Feldman were more recent arrivals than Oberndorfer and Shelden because they came from American universities with different school terms. Moss said she might like to study with a tutor to learn more about women in Judaism. Feldman said he would like an opportunity to learn more about Jewish ethics. 

Using Moss's interest to explain the tutorial program, Rabbi Grodner said: "If a student such as Laura is interested in women's studies, we would find a tutor who has experience and knowledge in this particular subject. We would match the tutor with her, and then they would sit together and study text. I would say the emphasis of the beit midrash program is the studying of text. It is not schmoozing and talking. It is getting to know the classical texts of Judaism and from those texts the student can choose to do whatever he or she wishes to do. 

"So be it women's studies, talmud, halacha, philosophy, ethics -- all of this is available. The greatest pleasure that I get is seeing a young volunteer tutor who has a strong background sitting with a student who doesn't have as strong a background. They are sitting together as study partners. In time a friendship develops between the two. We have tutors who are in touch with former students whom they taught 4-5 years ago. It's a beautiful aspect of this program." 

Moss reacted enthusiastically. "I think definitely a way to better understand issues is to look at the actual texts and to understand how that person thought and the possibilities and variations from that," she commented. "That's why I like the Parsha of the Week Class." 

Given their backgrounds respectively in the Reform and Conservative movements, Oberndorfer and Shelden were asked their feelings about attending services in an Orthodox congregation.
"I came to Israel to get a varied perspective and being in Israel has definitely challenged me to sit and think about where my Judaism fits into my life and where I fit into Judaism," Oberndorfer said.
"I have come to the understanding in the past few months that I am a Reform Jew; that is who I am and that is where I fit in; that is what is important to me," she added. 

"But as a Reform Jew, it is my obligation and my privilege to study all material. ... I think it is important to learn from different movements and to come to Orthodox learning, Conservative learning and Reform learning to be able to get a varied perspective and to be able to choose what I want..." 

Shelden said she felt "pretty much the same" as Oberndorfer. "I feel that I am here to learn; that I don't necessarily have as many opportunities at home, to get the varied perspectives and to learn... Here I have an opportunity to come to Hecht, to see different perspectives and to learn from different rabbis in their talks and lectures." 

Grodner, who once occupied an Orthodox pulpit in Scarsdale, N.Y., said "the idea of movements is not such a keen idea here in Israel, and certainly not at the Hecht Synagogue. We view our synagogue as well as our programming as open to everybody. Everybody is equal. We are all part of one nation. We don't have these kinds of divisions which are so prevalent in America. 

"Our objective is to impart knowledge and understanding to the students who are looking for that knowledge and understanding. There is no kind of coercion. It is simply if you want to learn, we are available here to teach you." 

The rabbi said he believes alumni of programs from the Hecht Synagogue go home "more rooted in their Jewishness; they have a much stronger Jewish identity; much more awareness; much more knowledge and they share that with others."