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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:
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
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- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
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- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
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- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
- The Cross at Sinjar: Tom Holland’s Dominion
- Rick Warren: A Biography
- Deepok Chopra: 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)
Category Archives: Agunot
The Chained Woman as Coalition Pressure Point
The agunah problem (wives without a Jewish divorce) provides a clean test case for David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory in Orthodox halakha. The textual material is indeterminate. The Talmud, the Rishonim, the Acharonim, and the modern responsa supply enough raw material … Continue reading
Posted in Agunot
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Rescuing Chained Women
I remember discussing agunot eleven years ago at Aish HaTorah with Rabbi Aryeh Markman (in 2007 he described me as a "Torah weirdo" in the Jewish Journal) and he said it was just an excuse for people to bash Orthodox … Continue reading
Posted in Agunot
Tagged child custody issues, child custody rights, feminist legislation, rabbi shlomo amar, rabbi shlomo riskin, torah judaism
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Highland Park, NJ – Rabbi Teitz: Rabbonim Naive, Dealing With Female Gender, And ‘Agunot’ Issues
Morris emails: "another jerk rabbi gives pro feminist lecture an agunot. may they all burn in hell. Luke, perhaps the reason why there are so many singles outhere,is because these feminists are causing fear in these men who dont want … Continue reading
Jewish women abandoned but unable to remarry?
Bari Weiss writes in the Wall Street Journal: Susan Rosenfeld’s marriage wasn’t what you’d call romantic. She was thrown up against a wall, doused with a bucket of cold water in bed, and, toward the end, became her husband’s punching … Continue reading
Posted in Agunot
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The Wrong Poster Couple
Elizabeth Berney, an attorney, posts to my site about Friday’s Wall Street Journal column on Jewish divorces and women who can’t receive one: The refusal of certain individuals to give (or accept) a “Get” (Jewish divorce) and spousal abuse are … Continue reading
Posted in Agunot
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Jewish women abandoned but unable to remarry
Bari Weiss writes in the Wall Street Journal: Susan Rosenfeld’s marriage wasn’t what you’d call romantic. She was thrown up against a wall, doused with a bucket of cold water in bed, and, toward the end, became her husband’s punching … Continue reading
Posted in Agunot
Comments Off on Jewish women abandoned but unable to remarry