For What it’s Worth: Warren Hecht

On July 24, 1974, the United States Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over recordings he had made in the White House. The most famous recording was the tape with an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap, which occurred during Nixon’s meeting with his chief of staff Bob Halderman. This meeting was right after the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon’s Secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that the gap occurred because she accidentally erased the tape while answering the phone. No one bought her story. Within three weeks, Nixon was gone, having resigned the presidency. At that time, Nixon still had the support of the Republican base. However, the leadership of the party, including Senator Barry Goldwater, thought that this conduct warranted removal and asked Nixon to resign.

Two weeks ago, I called on everyone, especially those who are frequent letter writers to the paper, to write to the Committee on Character and Fitness if you are opposed to Fatima Mousa Mohammed being admitted as an attorney. I wrote:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made the following comments a couple of weeks ago: “Covid-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.” “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.” 

“It’s a boy!” is a phrase that you do not hear too often in my and my wife’s family. My wife had two sisters and her mother had two sisters. We have four daughters. My daughter Penina had a girl. Thus, for four generations, there were only girls in my wife’s line.

After my guinea pig, Oreo, died three months ago, I went to the animal shelter where I adopted my other guinea pig, Squirrel, and picked out a new buddy for Squirrel. The new pet was known as Pollie (we changed his name to Slinky because when he stood on his hind legs he stretched like a slinky).

Another Jewish paper published an ad by a messianic Chabad group that believes that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Mashiach. I assume that it was published to correspond to his Yahrtzeit. There may be some individuals who were upset that the paper printed the ad, but I think that they did the community a service by publishing it. It is a reminder that within the Chabad community there are those who believe that the Rebbe is the Mashiach. Clearly there has been a reduction in public pronouncements since the original fervor. Is the belief in the Rebbe as Mashiach lessening or are there other factors for publicly toning down the claim, such as it is “bad for business”?  Although I do not have an answer, the question is something we should have in the back of our mind.