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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 Jews Who Embrace The Bahá’í Faith
ChatGPT says: Jews who embrace the Bahá’í Faith (sometimes called Bahá’ís of Jewish background) are navigating a hybrid alliance transition that carries different implications than Buddhism or bhakti conversions. The Bahá’í Faith presents itself as a unified, progressive religion that … Continue reading
Decoding The Jewish Infatuation Bhakti Hinduism
ChatGPT says: Jews who get into bhakti Hinduism are doing something riskier and more revealing than JewBu. This is not just tool borrowing. It is partial alliance flirtation. Bhakti is not a thin practice like mindfulness. It centers devotion, surrender, … Continue reading
Posted in Jews
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Decoding The West’s Infatuation With Buddhism
ChatGPT says: The West’s infatuation with Buddhism is not a conversion pattern. It is a low-cost status and identity accessory. Western societies already have dense institutions, legal systems, and moral languages. They do not need Buddhism to coordinate behavior or … Continue reading
Decoding The Fight Over Love Addiction
The NYT reports: “Is Love Addictive? Many Say Yes, and It’s Changing Our Idea of Romance. Poems and songs say love should be world-shattering. The logic of love addiction suggests that it shouldn’t.” ChatGPT says: The fight over “love addiction” … Continue reading
Posted in Addiction, Love, Psychiatry, Psychology
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Decoding Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits
ChatGPT says: Per Alliance Theory: Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits was a latent authority redistributor whose work offered Orthodoxy a way to loosen enforcement without confessing defeat, and whose influence today is strongest precisely where formal authority is weakest. He was not … Continue reading
Posted in R. Eliezer Berkovits
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Decoding Islam
ChatGPT says: Islam sits structurally between Christianity and Judaism, and that explains why it treats theology, law, and practice as an integrated package rather than privileging one. Islam emerged as a rapid-expansion coalition that still needed strong internal discipline. It … Continue reading
Posted in Islam
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Decoding Christian Theology
ChatGPT says: Theology matters more to Christians than to Jews because it plays a different alliance function in each tradition. Christianity historically built large, fast-scaling alliances that crossed kinship lines, languages, and political borders. For that kind of coalition to … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity
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Decoding Reuven Kimelman
ChatGPT says: Reuven Kimelman is a high-status alliance stabilizer rather than a boundary-breaking intellectual or charismatic entrepreneur. His role is not to create a new coalition or rebel narrative. It is to legitimate and coordinate an existing elite alliance that … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
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Decoding Jonathan Sarna
ChatGPT says: Per Alliance Theory: Jonathan Sarna is a memory custodian and legitimacy stabilizer whose work functions to keep American Jewish identity coherent, respectable, and non-threatening across deep internal disagreement. He is not trying to adjudicate truth claims. He is … Continue reading
Posted in Jonathan D. Sarna
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Decoding Rabbi Philip Berg
ChatGPT says: Per Alliance Theory: Rav Philip Berg was a spiritual arbitrageur and mass-market alliance entrepreneur whose core innovation was to strip Kabbalah of Jewish enforcement while retaining its prestige, mystique, and promise of power. He was not reforming Judaism. … Continue reading
Posted in Kabbalah Centre
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