The Breuer community has cautiously applied Torah im Derech Eretz to American life, narrowing its application over time.[13] Rabbi Schwab warned of the dangers of contemporary moral attitudes in secular culture and literature, and emphasized that followers of Neo-Orthodoxy therefore require a strong basis of faith and knowledge, and must exercise caution in engagements with the secular world.
Rabbi Schwab also frequently emphasized that Torah can never be regarded as parallel with the secular knowledge. “Torah study is the highest duty of the Jew”, and “even to suggest that anything can be parallel to Torah is a blasphemy of the highest order; Torah is above all, and everything else in life must be conducted in accordance with the Written and Oral Torah.” Still, entry into commerce or the professions is seen as a valid component of Torah life, to be facilitated by an appropriate secular education (with the caveat that campus life is “incontestably immoral”). “Carrying on one’s professional life in consonance with the halakha is in itself a practice of Torah.” One must “establish the Torah’s primacy over the modes of business and professional life so that his behavior transforms even that ‘mundane’ portion of his life into a sanctification.”
The community is positioned ideologically outside of both Modern Orthodoxy and Haredi Judaism (“Ultra-Orthodoxy”). As regards Haredi Judaism, Rabbi Schwab acknowledged that although Neo-Orthodoxy is not the path openly espoused by the majority of today’s Roshei Yeshiva, the “Torah Only” and Torah Im Derech Eretz camps can exist side-by-side. “As long as one is prompted solely by Yiras Shamayim (“fear of Heaven”) and a search for truth, each individual has a choice as to which school he should follow.” Practically, the community is fully engaged with haredi Agudath Yisrael of America, while it shuns the more modern Orthodox Union.
The movement is somewhat distant from Modern Orthodoxy. Rabbi Schwab regards Modern Orthodoxy as having misinterpreted Hirsch’s ideas: regarding standards of halakha as well as the relative emphasis of Torah versus secular.
(Torah im Derech Eretz, Wikepedia).