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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:
- Allen Guttmann and the Myth of Rational Secularization
- The Illusion of the Sovereign Imagination
- The Myth of Cosmopolitan Transcendence
- Lionel Trilling and the Liberal Imagination
- Mearsheimer’s Wager on Human Nature
- Edward Wadie Said (1935-2003)
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- Fredric Jameson
- Homi K. Bhabha
- Howard Lutnick and the Two Terrors
- Full Faith and Credit
- The Conquest of the Creature
- The Index of His Father
- The Hero System That Says Its Name: Moshe Hillel Hirsch and the Greatness of Man
- Who Keeps the People Alive: A Hero-System Essay on Rabbi Dov Lando
- The Man Who Priced The Long Run
- The Return
- Redemption Has an Address: The Hero System of Bezalel Smotrich
- Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Two Terrors
- Razin Caine and the Quiet He Cannot Keep
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)
Author Archives: Luke Ford
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
When the Tacit Cannot Stay Tacit: Turner, Shapiro, and the Crisis of Mosaic Authorship
Maimonides’ Principle 8 is an essentialist articulation imposed on a tradition whose operations were tacit. Stephen Turner’s framework, which attacks essentialism in social theory and treats tacit knowledge claims with skepticism, lets us see the move Maimonides made and the … Continue reading
The Boundary at Sinai: Principle 8 as Coalition Technology
Principle eight is the live wire of Orthodox theology today, and Shapiro’s chapter on it is the most explosive in his 2011 book, The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised. The Principle holds three claims at once. The … Continue reading
Reappraised: The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised (2011)
Marc Shapiro’s The Limits of Orthodox Theology is a book about a coalition document that does not know it is a coalition document. Shapiro’s argument runs at the level of doctrine and historical scholarship. The thirteen propositions Maimonides put forward … Continue reading