Hecht claimed that he had never experienced anti-Semitism in his life, and claimed to have had little to do with Judaism, but "was drawn back to the Lower East Side late in life and lived for a while on Henry Street, where he could absorb the energy and social consciousness of the ghetto", wrote author Sanford Sternlicht. In 1931, he published a novel, A Jew in Love, for which he was called, a "self-hating Jew", and which has been analysed as a product of a generation of Jewish writers seeking to escape their parent's immigrant past.
Hecht claimed that he had never experienced anti-Semitism in his life, and claimed to have had little to do with Judaism, but "was drawn back to the Lower East Side late in life and lived for a while on Henry Street, where he could absorb the energy and social consciousness of the ghetto", wrote author Sanford Sternlicht. In 1931, he published a novel, A Jew in Love, for which he was called a "self-hating Jew", and which has been analysed as a product of a generation of Jewish writers seeking to escape their parent's immigrant past.