Audio clip from interview with Rabbi Mel Hecht, March 17, 2016

My mom and dad bought a hotel in Hialeah, Florida, which is famous for its racetrack. The hotel was about a block from the racetrack and catered to trainers, jockeys, horse people; that sort of thing. I was really quite a country bumpkin. My first pair of store bought shoes, rather than hand me downs, I was so proud of that I tied the strings together and had them over my shoulders so that when I went to school everybody could see them. My friends and I used to use the vines from the Banyan trees to swing down on the back of cows and stuff of that nature. There was a flood in Hialeah and I remember us eating dinner and then watching a head just seem to float by out the windows. It had been raining for some time and the head was attached to a body that was in a boat. My father raised chickens and we had a chicken coop, probably two or three hundred chickens, and they were all in the trees outside. I remember how he had his pants rolled up and it really didn't help because the water was quite deep. After the chickens we had the biggest watermelons you'd ever care to see; he would throw the rinds in there and the seeds and the chicken poop and whatnot. I remember learning how to separate a chicken from its head as a youngster and watch the chicken run around headless, and how to de-feather the chicken. I guess this is kind of yuck, but these are memories that a kid would have. I have a rather special memory because obviously our neighbors were not Jewish. I knew that I was Jewish; my parents told me, but I didn't really have a sense of what that all meant. I was told that I was, but here we were living in Hialeah. I remember playing with my friends. It wasn't much of an issue until one time we were out shooting arrows with bows and one of my friends?I think he was a couple of years older than me?I asked for a turn and he said, "Wait a minute, you're a Jew." I said, "Yeah, that's what I'm told." He said, "Well, Jews killed Jesus." I said, "I don't know any Jesus." I never heard of that before. "Yeah, you killed Christ." I said, "Well, I don't know any Christ." He said, "Well, Jews killed him." I said, "Well, my parents are Jewish. They never told me that before." He kept pursuing that. He said, "Well, that's what I'm told. And you better start running because I'm going to take this bow and arrow and I'm going to shoot you. So you better get on home. If I hit you, then it was meant to be, and if I miss you that was meant to be. But don't you come on my property anymore." How old were you when this was going on? About eight years old. He looked kind of serious so I started running. I don't know, I was a hundred feet or so away and I turned my head to look and I see this arrow coming towards me. Thank God I turned my head back just in time where the arrow glanced off my temple. Had I kept on looking, it would have gone through my eye, into my nose or something. The next thing I hear is whack, whack, whack. I stopped in my tracks. I look back and his grandmother had been hanging clothes on the clothesline and she had heard all this, but she couldn't get over in time. She had this bamboo rod and she's hitting this kid. He's on the ground crying. I stopped in my track and looked back and she says, "Don't you ever hit that Jew boy again. Jews are the children of Christ. God has a special place for them. And if I ever catch you there, I'm going to kill you." I start walking slowly back. "From now on, you guard him. You make sure nobody ever hurts him again. And if I catch you doing something bad to him, I will beat you to the end of your life." The kid became my best friend. I went home. I told my mother what happened. She sat me down and she said, "Some people just don't know and they're ignorant and they've been told things that aren't true and you're lucky that his grandmother is one of those Christians who really know the truth. We need to go over there now and thank her." She went over. She knocked on the door. I remember this so vividly. The grandmother opened the door. My mother tried to thank her and she couldn't get the words out of her mouth. The grandmother came out and gave her a hug. That memory has stayed with me to this day and was primarily responsible for me realizing that I couldn't give into a Jewish prejudice; that there are bad people and there are good people and it can have a lot to do with what they're told and what they learn; you've got to be careful on the judgments that you make.