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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Linton Besser: A Reporter and the Paper Trail
- Gerald Stone and the Making of Australian Current Affairs
- Paul Barry: A Chronicler of Australian Power
- The Dean of Revolutionary Scholarship: Gordon S. Wood, 1933-2026
- The Last Generalist: Bob Ellis and Australian Public Life
- WEHT to Investigative Journalism?
- The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers
- When Radio Hosts Transition To Podcasts
- The Jeremy Paxman Voice
- The David Dimbleby Voice
- The Krishnan Guru-Murthy Voice
- The Voice of Lyse Doucet (BBC World News)
- The Voice of Yalda Hakim (Sky News)
- The Yves Montand Voice
- The Voice of BBC Newsreader Clive Myrie
- The Tom Bradby Voice (ITV Newsreader)
- The Cathy Newman Voice
- The Huw Edwards Voice
- The Marv Albert Voice
- The Joe Piscopo Show
BEST POSTS:
* American Epistemics (1-19-26)
* The Most Socially Toxic Inconvenient Truths (1-18-26)
* The Luke Ford Genre (1-18-26)
* The Filkins Pivot: Legacy Prestige and the Fracturing of the Chattering Class (1-16-26)
* Decoding The Trump Doctrine (1-4-26)
* If Tatiana Schlossberg were “Tatiana Smith” (12-30-25)
* ‘I’m So Trained’: How The Credential Society Burned Down the Palisades (12-28-25)
* Status Closure and The Lost Generation (12-25-25)
* The Bondi Massacre (12-15-25)
* Sydney Jews Learn That Their Aussie Social Contract Has Become A Suicide Pact (12-15-25)
* Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre (12-14-25)
* Decoding Nick Fuentes (11-2-25)
* The Landscape of Emotional Sobriety (10-29-30)
* The Rise & Fall Of Air Supply (10-19-25)
* No Kings, No Results: How Elite Pride Replaced Real Progress (10-19-25)
* You Are An Important Soldier In A Great War (9-7-25)
* The Revolt Of The Masses (8-31-25)
* The Covenant of Ashwood (8-24-25)
* If you can’t trust central bankers, then who can you trust? (8-23-25)
* Why Is The Elite Media Singing From The Same Hymnal About The Trump-Putin Summit? (8-17-25)
* Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often? (8-16-25)
* Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)
* When Elites Restrict Our Speech, It’s Because They Love Truth, Freedom & Democracy (8-3-25)
Category Archives: Marc B. Shapiro
Marc Shapiro: ‘Abraham Rosenberg, R. Chaim Heller, R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach on Conversion, Abortion, Mercy Killings, and new pictures and videos of R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg’
March Shapiro writes May 8, 2024: I discussed the enigmatic plagiarizer Abraham Rosenberg. As we saw, in 1923 and 1924 Rosenberg published articles on the Jerusalem Talmud in the Orthodox journal Jeschurun, and he later published Al Devar Tikunei Nushaot … Continue reading
The Documentarian Inside the Coalition: Marc B. Shapiro and the History He Will Not Write
Historian Marc B. Shapiro keeps finding things strange. A photograph of the Chazon Ish wearing a tie. A passage from Rabbi Kook removed in a later edition. A biography of a haredi gadol that omits his secular education. A halakhic … Continue reading
Marc Shapiro: ‘Franciscans and More; “Repulsive” Practices; Saul Lieberman, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and R. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg’
The post has the same tripartite structure Shapiro often uses, but the load-bearing section is the one in the middle on “repulsive” practices. Read carefully, that section does something the Kook book argues theoretically: it documents the operation of natural … Continue reading
The Langer Affair
1-29-25 Shapiro lays out the case well but the analytical payoff sits in what he leaves implicit. Halevy’s dissertation thesis cuts against the surface story. On the surface, a halakhic dispute escalates because R. Shlomo Goren is reckless and his … Continue reading
Marc B. Shapiro: ‘Neturei Karta; ArtScroll, Arius, and Orangutans; Suicide and the Law of Rodef’
The post repays close reading because it shows Shapiro stepping outside his usual historical-method bracket and applying his documentary technique to a present coalition. The Neturei Karta section is the most direct moral judgment in his recent output. He calls … Continue reading
Marc B. Shapiro’s YT Series On Rav Kook: ‘Renewing the Old, Sanctifying the New’
9-9-25 The YT video catches Shapiro doing in real time what the book does on the page. Rav Kook is a founder figure who needs to break with the standard rabbinic coalition technology of humility theater. The technology requires that … Continue reading
Marc B. Shapiro: ‘Two Books by R. Bezalel Naor, R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, Michael Lerner, and More’
The most consequential thread runs through Shapiro’s third section on the king’s power to kill innocents. Earlier authorities give startling positions. R. Levi ben Gershom recommends executing a captive enemy of the Jewish people. R. Zvi Hirsch Chajes says a … Continue reading
Marc B. Shapiro: ‘The Aderet (part 2); Sonya Diskin and R. Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin; Zvi Glatt; and a New Letter from R. Herzog’
Several threads here repay close attention. The R. Kook censorship discovery stands out. R. Kook excises three paragraphs from his father-in-law’s autobiography when he reproduces the passage in Eder ha-Yekar. The middle paragraph speaks of hatred for sinners. The flanking … Continue reading
The Convenience of Catechism: Why Principle 8 Survives Its Own Refutation
Stephen Turner’s framework on convenient beliefs gives us tools that fit Shapiro’s 2011 book, The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised. The framework holds that beliefs in many domains are not held because they track truth. They are … Continue reading
Marc Shapiro: ‘R. Moshe Zuriel, the Aderet, Sonya Diskin, and ChatGPT’
The haskamah self-endorsement material gives a clean window into how the genre operates. The Aderet writes approbations for his own anonymously published works and feels awkward calling himself ha-ma’or ha-gadol, but the convention requires it. Had he used plainer language, … Continue reading