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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:
- Cofnas, Lynn, and the Control Case
- The Arday Affair and the Coalition Test
- What the Arday Coverage Established: A First Claim-Level Audit, Including the Results That Cut Against My Own Thesis
- Two Carrier Groups and a Market in Testimony: Cultural Trauma Theory and the Arday Affair
- What the Institutions Were Buying: A Demand-Side Account of the Jason Arday Appointments
- Who Is Cheap to Threaten: Legal Deterrence and the Selection of Publishers
- ‘Jason Arday: The Most Extreme Academic Plagiarism Case in Modern History | Nathan Cofnas’
- The Vanishing Author: First-Person Density in Luke Ford’s Archive, 2007 to 2026
- Four Dates and No Cause: What Changed Luke Ford’s Blogging Between Late 2023 and Late 2025
- Two Defensible Denominators: What a Standard Accusation Dictionary Says About Luke Ford’s Archive, and Why It Says the Opposite Thing Twice
- The Second Collapse: Twenty Years of Luke Ford’s Publication Threshold, Measured
- Luke Ford and the E-Personality: Twenty-Nine Years of Disinhibition, Self-Regulation, and the Price of Friction
- The Room Around the Argument: Audience Sorting at Outside the Beltway, 2003-2026
- Steven Taylor, James Joyner and the E-Personality: Aboujaoude’s Virtually You Tested on Twenty Years of Outside the Beltway
- Amy Wax and the E-Personality: A Claim-Level Analysis, 1996-2026
- After Cathy’s Table: How Digital Platforms Reshaped a Generation of Professional Writers
- Nathan Cofnas and the E-Personality: The Auditor, the Performer, and the Cambridge Investigation
- The E-Personality of the Public Intellectual
- NYT: ‘What Do Students Lose When They Stop Writing?’
- Another National Treasure is Falling to AI (Fiction)
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)
Category Archives: R. J. B. Soloveitchik
Meir Soloveitchik Could be a Real Thinker
David N. Myers and Pini Dunner, “A Haredi Attack on Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik: A Battle over the Brisker Legacy.” Jewish Quarterly Review 105, no. 1 (2015) This is Myers co-authoring with Pini Dunner, who is a complicated figure inside … Continue reading
Posted in Modern Orthodox, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Meir Soloveichik
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Orthodox Judaism’s Leading Apologists
From age eight to eleven, living at Avondale College in Australia, I had to read thirty to forty pages of Christian apologetics every day but the Sabbath and then type a one-page summary to show my father I had understood … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Judaism, Marc B. Shapiro, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Natan Slifkin
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Decoding James Kugel
Per Alliance Theory: Bible scholar James Kugel’s core move was to master two alliances that normally distrust each other. He was raised Orthodox and trained deeply in traditional modes of reading Tanakh and Midrash. He knows the inside language. He … Continue reading
Posted in James Kugel, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Jonathan Sacks
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Decoding The Hubbub Over Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Written with AI: The hubbub surrounding Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, often referred to simply as the Rav, stems from his unique position at the intersection of two prestige hierarchies: the Brisker dynasty of Talmudic analysis and the European tradition of … Continue reading
Posted in R. J. B. Soloveitchik
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Decoding Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Written with AI: Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a norm translator and moral ambassador rather than a boundary enforcer or institutional governor. Telushkin’s power does not come from controlling entry, legitimacy, or halachic process. It comes from shaping how Jews explain … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, Ben Shapiro, Conversion, Dennis Prager, Guru, Marc B. Shapiro, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Jonathan Sacks, R. Joseph Telushkin
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Why Do Intellectuals Love R. JB Soloveitchik?
Intellectuals love Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik because he provides a high-status “handshake” between the world of the Lithuanian yeshiva and the world of Continental philosophy. In the lens of Alliance Theory, Soloveitchik represents a rare “dual-loyalty” figure who successfully maintained … Continue reading
Posted in Alliance Theory, R. J. B. Soloveitchik
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Rabbis Thirsting For Honor
I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist. I was a preacher’s kid. I knew dozens of clergy. Almost all of them said they felt a divine call to become a pastor. By contrast, I don’t know any rabbis who felt a … Continue reading
Posted in Hafetz Hayim, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, Rabbis
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Should We Look To Rabbis For Temporal And Political Guidance?
Jonathan Baker writes: This is a set of summaries of a series of six lectures on the teachings of Harav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik zt”l by Rabbi Aaron Rothkoff-Rakeffet at Lincoln Square Synagogue from 7 June to 12 July 1993. … Continue reading
Posted in Marc B. Shapiro, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, Rabbis
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What’s The Difference Between A Torah Scholar And A Gadol?
In a lecture on rabbinic biographies for Torah in Motion, Orthodox rabbi and history professor Marc B. Shapiro says: “In the haredi world [ultra-Orthodoxy], [Rav J.B. Soloveitchik] is recognized as a Torah scholar but not as a gadol [great rabbi]. … Continue reading
Posted in Marc B. Shapiro, Orthodoxy, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, Rabbis
Tagged chazon ish, haredi world, Marc B. Shapiro, orthodox rabbi, torah in motion, torah scholar
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The Last Of The Pure Sephardic Poskim
In a 2008 lecture for Torah in Motion on Rabbi Ben Zion Uzziel (former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel), history professor Marc B. Shapiro says: He’s one of the last of the few Sephardic poskim (deciders of Jewish law). The … Continue reading
Posted in Ashkenazim, Marc B. Shapiro, Orthodoxy, R. J. B. Soloveitchik, Sephardim, Yeshiva
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