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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:
- Jean Raspail: The Consul of Lost Causes
- Michel Houellebecq: A Life
- Anthony Lane: A Life
- Author Philip Gourevitch
- Joseph Telushkin: The Accountant’s Son Who Taught America Judaism
- Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (2012)
- WP: As Christians are attacked in Israel, government shows little concern
- Life as a Haredi Jew
- Moral Philosopher Derek Parfit
- The Life of George Gilder
- Richard Posner’s Legal Pragmatism
- The MLA: A History
- The Great Delusions in History Theory
- Allan Bloom: The Teacher Who Wanted Your Soul
- The Great Delusions in Literary Theory
- William K. Wimsatt Jr.: The Judge of Evidence
- Larissa MacFarquhar: The Woman Who Slows Judgment Down
- Stanley Fish: A Biography
- Hortense Spillers: The Grammar Lesson
- Paul Gilroy: A Biography
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Author Archives: Luke Ford
Decoding Rabbi Shimon Shkop
Written with AI: Per Alliance Theory: Rabbi Shimon Shkop was a coalition engineer operating at the level of method, not policy. His greatness was not that he issued rulings or led a faction. It was that he redesigned how an … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Ernest Becker, Haredi, Hasidim, Lithuania
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Decoding Orthodox Judaism
Aaliyah Adas Torah (LA) Adath Israel (SF) Affordability Agudath Israel of America Aish HaTorah More Apologetics Atlanta Baltimore Bais Yaakov (LA) Belz Yeshivot – Jerusalem Ben Shapiro Bergen County Bet Din of America Beth Israel Congregation (Miami Beach) Beth Jacob … Continue reading
Posted in Orthodoxy
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The Off The Derech Memoir
Written with AI: Per Alliance Theory: Memoirs by former members of the Orthodox Jewish community are often termed off the derech books. Reva Mann, who is the daughter of a London rabbi and the granddaughter of former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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Why Does A Rosh Yeshiva Have More Status Than A Rav?
The shift in power from the rav to the rosh yeshiva reflects a change in the currency of communal alliances. In the premodern era, the rav managed a geographic alliance. He governed everyone within a physical territory because the state … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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Alliance Theory & Hero Systems
Ernest Becker’s hero system and Alliance Theory snap together cleanly once you drop the idea that either is mainly about belief. Becker says humans need a hero system to manage death anxiety. A hero system tells you what counts as … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Christopher Lasch, Ernest Becker
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Decoding Todd Endelman
Todd M. Endelman provides a necessary correction to the historiography of Anglo-Jewish life by shifting the focus from the intellectual elite to the ordinary individual. He argues that the English experience differs from the German model because it lacks a … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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Decoding Heinrich Graetz
Heinrich Graetz provides the intellectual architecture for a Jewish identity that functions within the modern state. He recognizes that the Napoleonic era destroyed the judicial autonomy of the rabbinic class. When the state consumes the legal functions of the Jewish … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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Decoding Gershon Hundert
Gershon Hundert serves as a custodian of the Polish-Jewish archives. He views the pinkas, the communal record book, as the essential map of a self-governing civilization. His work focuses on the Council of the Four Lands. This body governed Jewish … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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Decoding Daniel Boyarin
Daniel Boyarin is a prominent Talmudic scholar at UC Berkeley known for his work in queer theory and feminist readings of Jewish texts, but he is not publicly identified as gay. He has been married to his wife, Chava, since … Continue reading
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Decoding Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch
Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch operates within a specific lineage that predates the modern State of Israel. His authority rests on the concept of the Old Yishuv. This group maintained an independent existence in Jerusalem long before the rise of political Zionism. … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory
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