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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:
- 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)
- What Percentage of Philip N. Cohen’s Blog Passes the Front Page Test?
- Paul Bloom’s Small Potatoes Archive
- The Two Accusations
- I Believe Everybody, Including Iran, Acts Rationally in Pursuit of their own Interests
- The Set, the Voice & the Anthropology of Philip N. Cohen
- WP: ‘Trump’s Harvard loss conceals a strategic victory’
- WSJ: ‘Even Claude Is in the Dark About Dario Amodei’s Wife—and Her Influence at Anthropic’
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: Lakewood
When The Texts Are the Costume: Coalition Warfare and Halachic Discourse in the Lakewood Boycott and the Haredi Draft Crisis
The Lakewood beit din boycott and the Haredi draft crisis in Israel are not separate phenomena. They are two expressions of the same underlying structure. Lakewood concerns control over who may enter the marriage pool. The draft crisis concerns control … Continue reading
Posted in Lakewood, Marc B. Shapiro, Orthodoxy
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The Costume and the War: Halachic Dispute as Coalition Warfare in the 2025 Lakewood Boycott
The academic study of Orthodox Judaism has developed a sophisticated language for describing internal change. It can map ideological shifts, note sociological pressures, and gesture at “political factors.” What it does not do is cross the line into naming certain … Continue reading
Influencers Investigate Haredi Jews For Welfare Abuse
Inspired by Nick Shirley‘s investigation of Somali fraud in Minnesota, we now have MAGA influencers investigating Orthodox Jewish welfare fraud. Matt Forney posts: I’m starting to have a problem with influencers harassing Orthodox Jews for clout. Orthodox Jews are such … Continue reading
Decoding Lakewood’s Orthodox Jews
Per Alliance Theory: Lakewood functions as a high-density processing plant for the Orthodox soul. In David Pinsof’s Alliance Theory, it represents the final stage of institutional capture, where the alliance no longer needs to negotiate with the surrounding environment because … Continue reading
Decoding Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood
Written with AI: Through Alliance Theory, Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG) is best understood as a sovereignty-concentration engine whose purpose is to preserve, reproduce, and enforce ultra-Orthodox authority at scale by maximizing scholarship density, dependency, and boundary clarity. BMG is not … Continue reading
NJ.com: ‘3 more Lakewood houses raided in multi-million dollar welfare fraud investigation’
I had a Jewish girlfriend who was warned by cops in Los Angeles to keep her dog on a leash. When she thought they were gone, she let her dog off the leash. The police came back and wrote her … Continue reading
How Benefits Fraud Scam Spread So Widely In Orthodox Town
Similar scams are going on in many Orthodox communities. There’s no connection, in my experience, between Jewish observance and honesty. In much of the world, the word “Jew” is synonymous with dishonesty in business. Judaism is a system of dual … Continue reading
Shlomo Rechnitz & The 8th Principle Of The Jewish Faith
Marc B. Shapiro writes: The assumption of R. Navarra is also found in, of all places, Shlomo Rechnitz’s famous (or infamous, depending your perspective) speech on the Lakewood school situation. In this incredibly courageous speech, delivered, as it were, in … Continue reading
Posted in Lakewood, Shlomo Rechnitz, Torah
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VIDEO: A Path-Breaking Speech by R’ Shlomo Yehudah Rechnitz About Serious Issues Facing Lakewood
Yair Hoffman writes: Every so often a speech comes along that not only has a remarkable impact upon its audience, but it changes the trajectory of where that society is heading. Churchill gave such a speech in May of 1940 … Continue reading
Posted in Lakewood, Orthodoxy, Shlomo Rechnitz
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The Victory Of The Orthodox Jewish Extremists
In his fourth lecture on the Steipler for Torah in Motion, professor Marc B. Shapiro says: “Why are so many extremist figures leaders in our era? Rav Ahron Kotler, the Steipler, Rav Shach. “People are looking for extremism. Moderation is … Continue reading
Posted in Haredi, Lakewood, Marc B. Shapiro, Orthodoxy
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