Moshe Koppel is an Israeli-American computer scientist, mathematician, Talmud scholar, and political activist. Born in New York City in 1956, he received a traditional Jewish education, studying at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel before earning a B.A. from Yeshiva University. He completed his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1979 at the Courant Institute of New York University under Martin Davis, followed by a post-doctoral year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, before immigrating to Israel in 1980. Since 1980, Koppel has been a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Bar-Ilan University, where his research focuses on machine learning, social choice theory, and computational linguistics, particularly authorship attribution. His pioneering work has shown that statistical analysis of word usage can reveal an author's gender, age, native language, and personality, with applications in commercial, security, and Jewish studies contexts—such as proving the authorship of a 19th-century rabbi's book and exposing forgeries in Hassidic letters. He has published on social choice theory with Avraham Diskin and developed a chess program with Nathan Netanyahu and Omid David that placed second in the 2008 World Computer Chess Championship. In Jewish scholarship, Koppel has authored Meta-Halakhah, applying mathematical logic to Rabbinic literature, and Seder Kinnim, a mathematical commentary on a Mishna tractate. With Ely Merzbach, he co-founded and co-edited the journal Higayon. As a public intellectual, Koppel is the founder and chairman of the Kohelet Policy Forum, a conservative right-wing Israeli think tank established in 2012, known for its libertarian influences and role in architecting the 2018 Nation-State Law and advocating for the controversial 2023 judicial reform, which sparked widespread protests and international criticism over threats to democracy. He serves on the board of trustees of the Tikvah Fund, receiving a $15,000 annual salary as of 2019. Koppel has been active in Israeli politics, co-authoring constitutional drafts with Michael Eitan, participating in Knesset committees, and drafting 2011 legislation requiring NGOs to disclose foreign funding. In 2025, the Kohelet Forum hosted the launch of the Leadership Institute's first international branch in Jerusalem. His ideology critiques secular and classical religious Zionism, justifying Jewish settlements in occupied territories to broaden right-wing appeal, as explored in his 2021 book Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Matters, which contrasts traditional religious morality with progressive cosmopolitanism.