Hecht rose to prominence in the 1970s after he began a program that sought to remove and educate Jewish youths away from various cults.
[7] Hecht was appointed by New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as Commissioner of Human Rights.
After his father died, Hecht assumed the role of host of the "Shema Yisroel" radio program, a weekly one-hour show broadcast on WEVD in New York that focused on religion.
Hecht writes a weekly column that has been printed in many newspapers across the world such as The Jerusalem Post,[15] The Jewish Press,[16][17] GOP USA,[18] and Israel National News.
[21][22][23][24] As a result of their friendship, King donated one million dollars to the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education, an organization that Hecht serves as chairman of the board.
Hecht has explained that the reason that he does this is because the Rebbe gave his father special dispensation to endorse candidates for office.
He was the first Jewish leader to publicly back Scott Stringer for City Comptroller against former Governor Eliot Spitzer.
[33] His son Levi Hecht is a real estate developer in New York; he was named one of the "People to Watch" in the Hudson Valley in 2005.
In an article from the Tablet Magazine, Hecht maintains that rabbis should be granted the discretion to determine whether victims are lying before getting involved in a case of accused molestation.