I spent my Shabbat evenly divided between Chabad and the Modern Orthodox.
Friday night dinner was with Chabad. It was a big raucous informal table. As Dennis Prager says, it seems like all Chabad shlichim (emissaries) are funny and all their wives are gorgeous.
After dinner, I had a long walk to a Modern Orthodox speech where everything was proper and even the cookies were pristine.
When you are surrounded by those who observe at a similar level to you, it’s easy to be open and passionate. The Modern Orthodox, by contrast, spend more time in the world and have to constantly make compromises between their modernity and their orthodoxy. This accounts for the MO’s wariness.
