[6][7] Hirschfield was raised in a secular Jewish home but began to pursue a more traditionally observant life as a teenager thus becoming a baal teshuva.
Becoming disenchanted with this approach, he returned to the United States, where he met and worked for Orthodox rabbi and CLAL founder Irving Greenberg.
"[7] in 2002 Hirschfield was featured on ABC's Nightline UpClose,[10] and PBS's Frontline: Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero[11] In 2009 he was interviewed on the National Public Radio program Tell Me More,[12] and in 2010 for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's The Spirit of Things hosted by Rachael Kohn.
[15] In 2008 he published You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism,[16] described by a reviewer in The Christian Century as "a breathtaking treatise on the perils of rigid religious behavior".
He was featured, along with students and professors from the University of Oklahoma religious studies program, in a documentary entitled, Freaks Like Me, on the subject of religion in the age of terrorism.