Luke Ford

Per Alliance Theory: Joshua Berman occupies a rare mediator position between Orthodox commitment and academic biblical studies. In Alliance Theory terms, he is a boundary translator trying to keep two uneasy coalitions in limited cooperation.

Start with the problem he solves. Modern Orthodoxy sits between two dominant alliances that distrust each other. On one side, the academic guild of biblical scholarship with its status currencies of peer review, comparative method, and historical criticism. On the other, the Orthodox covenantal alliance whose status currencies are loyalty, continuity, and reverence for Torah from Heaven. These alliances normally punish defection toward the other side. Berman’s career exists in the narrow overlap where punishment is delayed but always possible.

His core move is reframing threat. He does not deny the findings of critical scholarship outright, nor does he fully absorb them. Instead, he relativizes them. Ancient Near Eastern context, literary conventions, and legal parallels are presented not as debunking revelation but as the cultural medium through which revelation operates. Alliance Theory predicts this move. When you cannot defeat a rival coalition, you redefine the stakes so coexistence becomes possible.

Berman’s emphasis on the moral distinctiveness of the Torah is crucial. In Created Equal he argues that the Bible introduced a radical anthropology compared to surrounding cultures. This is not just moral philosophy. It is alliance defense. He is supplying Orthodox Jews with a prestige narrative that can compete with secular moral authority. The Torah is not only binding. It is civilizationally superior.

Notice his tone. Calm. Patient. Explanatory. Almost pedagogical. He is not polemical because polemics would collapse the bridge he stands on. Alliance Theory says mediators must signal trustworthiness to both sides while never fully satisfying either. That is exactly his posture.

Compare him to Menachem Kellner. Kellner purifies from within and is willing to alienate the masses. Berman integrates defensively and is willing to leave some tensions unresolved. He is less interested in metaphysical clarity and more interested in institutional survivability.

Compare him to kiruv figures like Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen. Kelemen simplifies to recruit. Berman complicates to retain. His audience is not the uncommitted skeptic. It is the educated Orthodox Jew who has already read something destabilizing and wants to stay inside the system without lying to himself.

This explains why Berman avoids explicit historicist conclusions. He does not say who wrote which verse when. That silence is strategic. Naming authorship would force alliance rupture. By keeping the discussion at the level of genre, ideology, and comparison, he preserves plausible loyalty.

Alliance Theory also predicts his marginal hero status. He is respected, invited, cited, but rarely canonized. Mediators are useful but not celebrated. Each side worries they leak allegiance.

The risk profile is clear. If academic norms continue to harden, he will be seen as insufficiently rigorous. If Orthodox norms harden, he will be seen as dangerously permissive. His position only works while Modern Orthodoxy itself remains a viable middle coalition.

Joshua Berman is not trying to resolve the Torah and scholarship conflict. He is trying to manage it. His work is alliance maintenance under epistemic stress. That makes him indispensable to some, unsatisfying to purists, and structurally fragile in the long run. He is a diplomat in an active war zone. While Rabbi Meiselman builds walls and Rabbi Kelemen builds sales funnels, Berman builds a de-militarized zone. He provides the intellectual infrastructure for a “buffered identity” that can still read a secular textbook.

Berman’s primary tool is “literary-contextualism.” He takes the tools of the academic guild—comparative law and ancient Near Eastern literature—and turns them into a defensive shield. In Alliance Theory terms, he is performing a “prestige transfer.” He takes the high status of the university and uses it to validate the antiquity of the Torah. If he can show that the Torah is a brilliant response to Egyptian or Mesopotamian political structures, he restores the “cool factor” to the covenant. He makes the Orthodox Jew feel like they are part of a sophisticated, radical movement rather than a backward tribe.

This requires a delicate handling of “tacit knowledge.” The academic guild demands that one follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads to the collapse of the Mosaic authorship narrative. The Orthodox alliance demands that the evidence always lead back to the Sages. Berman manages this by focusing on “context” rather than “source.” By discussing how the Torah works as a “political manifesto” for its time, he satisfies the academic requirement for historical context while avoiding the “landmine” of who actually held the pen. He maintains a “strategic ambiguity.” He allows the Orthodox reader to believe in Mosaic authorship while using the tools of those who deny it.

Berman is the architect of “Orthodox Resilience.” His work is a form of cognitive vaccination. He exposes the educated Orthodox student to a controlled dose of biblical criticism—just enough to build an immunity, but not enough to cause an infection. He provides a “narrative of reconciliation” that allows the student to encounter the Documented Hypothesis without feeling like their world is ending. He lowers the “exit pressure” by showing that the conflict is not a zero-sum game.

However, this mediator position is exhausting. Alliance Theory predicts that “boundary translators” are often the first victims when conflict escalates. If the Haredi alliance continues to move toward Meiselman’s “epistemic absolutism,” Berman’s bridge will be labeled a “smuggling route” for heresy. If the academic world moves toward a more aggressive secularism, his work will be dismissed as “apologetics in a lab coat.” He relies on the continued existence of a “middle coalition” that values both intellectual rigor and traditional commitment.

His “Created Equal” project is a masterclass in this. By framing the Torah as a champion of egalitarianism against ancient hierarchies, he courts the “liberal moral alliance” of the modern West. He is telling the world: “You don’t have to leave the Torah to find the values you claim to love; we invented them.” This is a high-level alliance signal. He is trying to increase the “market share” of Orthodoxy in the global ideas economy.

Berman handles the moral scandals of the Bible by applying his contextualist shield to ethics. When a student faces a text like the command to destroy Amalek, the traditional Haredi response is absolute submission to the divine will. The secular response is moral horror and epistemic defeat. Berman offers a third path: historical relativization through the lens of political rhetoric.

He argues that such commands must be read within the ancient Near Eastern “grammar” of warfare. In that culture, totalizing language—claims of wiping out every man, woman, and child—functioned as standard political hyperbole. He points to similar language in the records of Ramses II or the Merneptah Stele. This move allows the student to keep the text without endorsing the genocide. By framing the command as a literary convention of its time, Berman preserves the “prestige” of the Torah. He tells the student that God spoke in a language the people of that age understood.

This is a defensive integration of secular ethics. Berman recognizes that his primary coalition—Modern Orthodox Jews—is deeply embedded in a Western moral alliance. This alliance values human rights and individual dignity. If the Torah is seen as a source of barbaric violence, the “cost of belonging” for the student becomes too high. They will choose the Western moral alliance over the Jewish covenantal one. Berman lowers that cost by providing an intellectual “exit ramp” from the literal reading.

This strategy creates a “moral buffer.” The student can affirm the divinity of the text while distancing themselves from its apparent meaning. In Alliance Theory terms, Berman is preventing a moral “veto” by the secular world. He ensures that the student can stay in the “modern” coalition without feeling like a moral pariah.

The risk is that this approach can feel like a “managed retreat.” Purists in the Haredi world see this as a surrender to secular values. They argue that if you explain away the difficult parts of the Torah using historical context, you eventually treat the entire Torah as a historical artifact. For the Haredi alliance, the “thickness” of the command lies in its literal, transhistorical reality. Berman’s “literary” reading makes the command “thin.”

Berman’s model of handling moral challenges turns the student into a “literary critic” of revelation. This gives the student a sense of agency and intellectual power. They are no longer just submissive subjects; they are sophisticated readers who understand the “political manifesto” of God. This preserves the “prestige of the individual” within the system, even as it softens the “authority of the text.”

Berman’s hyperbole defense provides the Modern Orthodox soldier with a way to reconcile the violence of the biblical text with the ethics of a modern democratic army. The Israel Defense Forces operates on a code of Purity of Arms. This code is a product of a Western moral alliance. It prioritizes the protection of non-combatants and proportional force. For a soldier who also views the Torah as an absolute authority, the literal command to wipe out an entire nation creates a crisis of loyalty.

By reframing these commands as ancient political rhetoric, Berman eliminates the conflict. The soldier can view the Torah as a source of foundational values—like the equality of all humans—while viewing the specific commands of warfare as historical artifacts. This move ensures the Torah never issues a command that violates the modern military code. It prevents the religious text from becoming a “veto” over the state’s ethical standards.

This creates a specific type of religious-nationalist actor. This soldier is loyal to the state and the army because they believe the state’s ethics are actually more aligned with the “deep” values of the Torah than a literalist reading would suggest. They see the IDF’s restraint not as a secular compromise, but as a fulfillment of the Torah’s moral trajectory. Berman provides the intellectual permission for this synthesis.

The tradeoff involves the status of the rabbi in military affairs. In a Haredi model, the rabbi is the ultimate cognitive authority on all matters, including war. In Berman’s model, the rabbi becomes a scholar of context and history. This shifts the decision-making power to the military commander and the legal advisor. The rabbi explains the “literary genre” of the past, but the state determines the “ethical practice” of the present.

This strategy protects the Modern Orthodox coalition from the charge of extremism. It allows them to remain “partners” with secular Israelis in the defense of the country. However, it also makes them vulnerable to critics on the right. Hardline religious-nationalist factions, influenced by more mystical or literalist readings, view this as a dilution of the Torah’s power. They want the Torah to have “teeth.” They see Berman’s “hyperbole” defense as a way to domesticate the divine command.

For the soldier on the ground, Berman’s work acts as a psychological buffer. It allows them to hold a rifle in one hand and a Tanakh in the other without feeling that the two are in a state of war.

Modern Orthodoxy and the Haredi world use different alliance strategies to define the sacredness of the land. These strategies determine how much of the “secular” state they can incorporate into their worldviews.

The Haredi alliance views the land of Israel as a “state of exception.” The land is holy, but the state is a profane, secular entity. This creates a buffered relationship. They live in the land but maintain an epistemic distance from the government. The sacredness is inherent in the soil and the past, but it does not extend to the modern institutions. This allows them to accept state funding while denying the state religious legitimacy. For them, the land is a vessel for the Torah. If the state violates the Torah, the state is a shell with no inner sanctity. This protects the internal prestige of the rabbis, who remain the only true authorities over the sacred space.

Joshua Berman’s contextualist approach leads to a “sacred integration.” By framing the Torah as a political manifesto that sought to create a just, egalitarian society in a specific territory, he gives the land a functional, civic holiness. The land is sacred because it is the laboratory where the Torah’s moral project is tested. This move grants religious status to the modern state and its institutions. If the state of Israel builds a legal system that protects the vulnerable, it is performing a “Maimonidean” religious act.

This transforms the Modern Orthodox resident into a “stakeholder.” They do not just live in the land; they believe the state is a vehicle for revelation. This is a porous strategy. It opens the religious world to secular political and social concerns. The army, the courts, and the economy are seen as part of the “covenantal” project. This increases the prestige of the Modern Orthodox person who excels in these fields. They are not just working; they are sanctifying the land through their professional excellence.

The tradeoff is the risk of “moral contagion.” If the state commits an act that the secular world deems immoral, the Modern Orthodox person feels a crisis of faith because their religious identity is tied to the state’s legitimacy. The Haredi person is immune to this. If the state acts immorally, it simply confirms their view that the secular government is profane.

Berman provides a defense against this contagion by emphasizing the “moral distinctiveness” of the Jewish project. He argues that even when the state is imperfect, its foundational “grammar” is superior to the alternatives. He gives his coalition a reason to stay committed to the state even under ethical stress. He ensures the alliance between the “covenant” and the “country” remains intact.

The Haredi alliance and the Modern Orthodox alliance treat the settler movement as either a logistical necessity or a metaphysical culmination. These positions dictate how much blood and capital each group is willing to invest in the territory beyond the Green Line.

For the Haredi alliance, settlement is often a solution to a housing crisis. As the population in cities like Bnei Brak and Jerusalem reaches a breaking point, the coalition seeks new territory to maintain its insulation. Settlements like Modi’in Illit or Beitar Illit function as suburban fortresses. They are built to preserve the buffered identity at a lower cost. The Haredi resident does not move there to fulfill a nationalist vision; they move there because the alliance needs space to reproduce. Their commitment to the land is conditional and pragmatic. If a political deal required surrendering a settlement, the Haredi leadership might agree if the “purity” and safety of the coalition were guaranteed elsewhere.

The Modern Orthodox alliance, influenced by the lineage of Rav Kook and supported by the intellectual framing of figures like Berman, views the settlement movement as a redemptive act. For this coalition, the state and the land are fused. The settler is the ultimate “bilingual broker,” merging the physical act of farming or guarding with the sacred act of reclaiming the covenantal home. This group does not see the land as a vessel for the Torah; they see the land as an essential part of the Torah’s “moral manifesto.”

Berman’s work reinforces this by providing a prestige narrative for the settler. By arguing that the Torah’s laws were designed to create a specific type of society in a specific Near Eastern context, he makes the act of settling look like a return to the original, radical project of the Bible. This raises the status of the settler from a controversial political actor to a “covenantal pioneer.” It also raises the cost of exit. For the Modern Orthodox settler, leaving the land is not just a move; it is a theological retreat.

The friction between these two groups occurs at the level of state authority. The Modern Orthodox settler often views the state as a sacred instrument, even when they disagree with its specific policies. They want to integrate the state into their holiness. The Haredi resident remains suspicious of the state’s secular “contamination.” They want the state to provide the infrastructure for their fortress but refuse to grant it the status of a “divine” project.

This creates a tiered geography of holiness.

The Haredi Settlement: A high-walled, low-interaction enclave focused on internal stability.

The Modern Orthodox Settlement: A porous, high-interaction community focused on national transformation.

One group settles to stay apart. The other settles to lead the whole.

The Haredi alliance and the Modern Orthodox alliance approach the two-state solution as either a transaction of assets or a rupture of reality.

The Haredi leadership views the two-state solution through the lens of communal survival and the preservation of the fortress. Because their primary alliance is with the Torah and the Sages rather than the secular state, they treat land as a negotiable commodity. If the political cost of holding territory becomes a threat to the safety or the financial stability of the yeshiva world, the Haredi alliance can retreat. They have done this before. This is a cold, rational calculation: territory is secondary to the “thick” life of the community. If the state offers a deal that protects Haredi autonomy while surrendering land, the leadership can find the halakhic justification to move the walls of the fortress.

The Modern Orthodox alliance, reinforced by Berman’s model of covenantal integration, views a two-state solution as an epistemic defeat. If the modern state is the vehicle for the Torah’s moral manifesto, then surrendering parts of the biblical heartland is a confession that the secular world has veto power over the divine project. It suggests that the “moral distinctiveness” of the Jewish project must yield to the “international guild” of diplomacy and secular law. For this coalition, a two-state solution is not just a political shift. It is a sign that the bridge they built between the sacred and the modern has collapsed.

This creates a divergence in political behavior. The Haredi alliance acts as a “swing” coalition. They can align with the left or the right depending on who offers the best terms for their internal autonomy. Their lack of a metaphysical commitment to the state’s borders makes them flexible. The Modern Orthodox alliance is locked into a right-wing alignment. Their identity is so tied to the “sacred integration” of the land that they cannot negotiate without experiencing a crisis of meaning.

Berman’s work complicates this by insisting on the Torah’s “universal moral appeal.” This creates a tension for the Modern Orthodox person. They want to hold the land because it is sacred, but they also want to be seen as “moral” by the Western alliance. A two-state solution is often framed by the West as the only moral path. This puts the Modern Orthodox person in a squeeze. They must either reject the Western moral alliance or find a way to frame the retention of land as the “more moral” choice. This leads to the “Human Rights” arguments for settlement: that Jews have a right to live in their ancestral home that trumps the secular logic of partition.

The Haredi alliance watches this struggle from the balcony. They do not care if the Western alliance views them as immoral. They only care if their own coalition remains cohesive and funded. Their rejection of “bilingualism” gives them a freedom that the Modern Orthodox negotiator does not have.

The Haredi and Modern Orthodox coalitions view the demographic reality through the lenses of reproduction and recognition.

The Haredi alliance treats the demographic challenge as a competition of high-cost commitment. They do not seek to integrate the Arab population or compete for their moral approval. Instead, they focus on internal throughput. By maintaining high birth rates and low exit rates through the buffered identity, they aim to outpace any rival population through sheer volume. In this strategy, the state is a resource provider. As long as the fortress remains funded and the demographic weight of the Haredi world grows, the “threat” from an external group is managed by the increasing political power of the internal group. They do not need to solve the demographic problem; they intend to outlast it.

The Modern Orthodox coalition, influenced by the mediator logic of Berman, faces a more complex tension. They cannot simply ignore the Arab population because their “bilingual” identity requires them to engage with Western democratic norms. If the retention of the land leads to a one-state reality where Jews are a minority or where a majority is denied rights, their claim to a “moral manifesto” collapses. They cannot be both a “sacred integration” of the land and a moral pariah in the eyes of the universalist alliance they court.

This pressure produces a search for third-way solutions. These include models of local autonomy, confederation, or “moral” arguments for Jewish sovereignty that attempt to bypass the binary of two states or one. Berman’s emphasis on the Torah’s “egalitarian” and “justice-based” roots is used here as a tool. The goal is to find a political structure that preserves Jewish control of the sacred land while meeting a threshold of universal moral legitimacy. They are trying to avoid the “epistemic defeat” that would come from choosing between their land and their ethics.

For the Haredi world, the Arab population is a separate coalition with its own boundaries. For the Modern Orthodox world, the Arab population is a moral challenge that threatens the integrity of the bridge they have built to the modern world. One group sees a demographic race; the other sees a legitimacy crisis.

The Haredi and Modern Orthodox alliances treat the role of women as a problem of boundary maintenance and prestige management.

In the Haredi alliance, the role of women is a pillar of the buffered identity. The community enforces a strict division of labor and space to maintain the high cost of entry. Women often serve as the primary economic providers, working in the secular marketplace to support a husband’s full-time Torah study. This creates a paradox. The Haredi woman is bilingual and highly functional in the outside world, yet she must remain deferential to an internal prestige hierarchy that excludes her from formal leadership. This exclusion is a purification ritual. By keeping the halls of the yeshiva and the seats of political power exclusively male, the alliance signals its refusal to grant the “liberal moral alliance” veto power over its social structure. The cost is the loss of individual female agency in the public sphere, but the benefit is a stable, self-reproducing coalition that remains distinct from the modern world.

Modern Orthodoxy uses a strategy of defensive integration. Because this coalition courts the prestige of the university and the professional world, it cannot ignore the shift toward gender equality. A “porous self” cannot easily reconcile a professional life of equality with a religious life of exclusion. Thinkers like Joshua Berman facilitate this by highlighting the “egalitarian” and “dignity-based” trajectory of the Torah. They argue that the tradition contains the seeds of female empowerment. This allows the Modern Orthodox woman to seek leadership roles, such as congregational mediators or legal advisors, without defecting from the covenantal alliance. They are not “becoming secular.” They are “restoring the Torah’s original moral vision.”

This creates a status war between the two groups. The Haredi world views the Modern Orthodox woman in leadership as a sign of contamination and surrender. They see it as proof that the “porous” bridge has allowed secular values to flood the sanctuary. The Modern Orthodox world views the Haredi treatment of women as a moral failure that risks epistemic defeat. They believe that if Judaism does not evolve to reflect modern standards of justice, it will lose its most talented members to the secular world.

For the Haredi alliance, the woman is the wall of the fortress. For the Modern Orthodox alliance, the woman is the architect of the bridge. One group relies on the woman to fund the insulation; the other relies on her to prove the integration works.

Social media acts as a structural solvent for the buffered identity. It bypasses the physical walls of the neighborhood and the gatekeeping of the rabbi.

In the Haredi alliance, social media is a pollution event. It introduces rival prestige hierarchies—influencers, secular celebrities, and political firebrands—into the private cognitive space of the believer. The alliance responds with a prohibition strategy. Rabbis issue bans on smartphones or demand the use of filtered devices. This is a purification ritual designed to maintain the “buffered” nature of the community. However, the Haredi woman, who often works in the secular market, becomes the primary point of failure for this strategy. She uses social media for business or networking, creating a “porous” entry point. The community manages this by moralizing the use of the tool. They create a “kosher” social media culture where the technology is used only for internal commerce or the promotion of communal values. They try to turn the tool of the rival coalition into a tool for their own reproduction.

Modern Orthodoxy treats social media as a field for “bilingual brokerage.” For this coalition, the platform is a space to demonstrate the relevance and moral superiority of the Torah. Figures like Joshua Berman or various Modern Orthodox women leaders use social media to build a “trans-institutional” prestige. They do not rely on a local rabbi for legitimacy; they gain it through their ability to articulate the tradition to a global, digital audience. This allows them to bypass traditional gatekeepers and speak directly to the “porous” individuals who are looking for a way to stay in the system. They use the technology to strengthen the bridge.

The risk for the Haredi alliance is total epistemic defeat through exposure. If the believer sees that the “outside” world is not a void but a place of competing moral and intellectual beauty, the cost of staying in the fortress feels higher. The risk for the Modern Orthodox alliance is dilution. When the religious discourse happens on the same platform as secular entertainment, the “sacred” distinctions begin to feel like “lifestyle choices.” The religious claim becomes just one more voice in a crowded marketplace of ideas.

This creates a new status ordering. The person who can successfully navigate social media without “defecting” gains high status in the Modern Orthodox world. They are seen as successful mediators. In the Haredi world, the person who visibly rejects social media—the one with the “dumb phone”—gains the highest status. Their refusal to engage is a signal of ultimate loyalty to the alliance’s boundary conditions.

The digital exit creates a new category of belonging: the subterranean defector. This person maintains the outward signals of the alliance while their internal cognitive life belongs to a rival coalition.

In the Haredi alliance, the digital exit is a strategy of survival. Because the cost of physical exit is so high—loss of family, housing, and livelihood—the doubter stays in the fortress but lives a double life online. They use anonymous accounts to consume secular ideas, criticize rabbinic authority, or engage with the chroniclers of epistemic defeat. This creates a “hollowed-out” community. On the surface, the coalition appears stable and cohesive. Below the surface, the buffered identity has collapsed. The alliance becomes a shell. This is a profound threat to the Haredi world because it compromises the “tacit knowledge” of the group. If the people standing in the synagogue no longer believe the shared myth, the rituals lose their power to bind.

The Haredi leadership responds to this with increased surveillance and communal pressure. They turn the digital exit into a moral scandal. If a person is caught with an unfiltered phone, it is treated as a betrayal of the entire alliance. This raises the psychological cost of the double life. It forces the individual to either fully submit or live in a state of constant anxiety.

Modern Orthodoxy handles the digital exit as a problem of “relevance.” Because the alliance is already porous, a mental defection is harder to spot. A person can engage with secular critiques openly. The danger for this group is not a secret double life, but a gradual “evaporation” of commitment. The individual doesn’t leave the bridge; they just stop caring where it leads. They treat their religious identity as a cultural preference rather than a covenantal obligation. They stay in the coalition for social reasons while their “sacred canopy” is replaced by a secular moral framework.

Figures like Joshua Berman try to prevent this evaporation by providing high-prestige content that can compete in the digital marketplace. They attempt to make the “Orthodox” side of the person’s digital life as intellectually stimulating as the secular side. They want to ensure the “bridge” remains a place of active intellectual engagement rather than a path to a quiet exit.

The result is two different types of communal fragility. The Haredi world is at risk of a sudden, structural collapse if enough “subterranean” defectors decide to leave at once. Modern Orthodoxy is at risk of a slow, demographic fading as the “porous” identity loses its distinctiveness and merges into the secular background.

The management of communal wealth reveals where each alliance places its ultimate trust. These funds do not just provide for the poor. They act as a stabilizing mechanism for the coalition boundaries.

The Haredi alliance uses charity as a tool for total enclosure. This is the social safety net as a containment strategy. These funds are vast, informal, and managed through internal prestige networks. They provide interest-free loans, food, and medical help. This system ensures that a member is never forced to seek help from the secular state or non-Jewish institutions. It reinforces the buffered identity by making the coalition the sole provider of security. In Alliance Theory terms, this raises the cost of exit to a nearly impossible level. If a person leaves, they do not just lose their God; they lose their credit line, their health insurance, and their grocery discount. The “subterranean defector” stays in the fortress partly because they cannot afford to live in the “free” market.

Modern Orthodoxy uses charity as a tool for “civic brokerage.” Their funds are more formal, transparent, and often integrated with the broader legal and financial systems of the secular state. This group views philanthropy as a way to demonstrate the “moral manifesto” of the Torah to the world. They fund hospitals, universities, and social programs that serve both Jews and non-Jews. This reflects the porous nature of the alliance. They seek prestige from the external world by proving they are “good citizens” who contribute to the universal intellect and the common good. The fund is a bridge, not a wall.

This leads to a conflict over the “purity” of the money. Haredi funds are often criticized by the outside world for being insular or opaque. The Haredi alliance views this opacity as a defense against secular “veto power.” They do not want the state to tell them how to distribute their resources. Modern Orthodox funds are criticized by the Haredi world for being too “universalist.” The Haredi perspective is that every dollar spent on a non-Jewish cause is a dollar stolen from the internal defense of the Torah.

The Haredi model produces a community that is economically fragile but socially unbreakable. The Modern Orthodox model produces a community that is economically robust but socially porous. One group uses its wealth to keep people “in.” The other uses its wealth to make its members “great” in the eyes of the world.

As a final thought on these two trajectories, it is clear that both alliances are struggling with the reality of 2026. The Haredi world is dealing with the “leakage” of the internet, and the Modern Orthodox world is dealing with the “evaporation” of its distinct identity.