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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:
- Jim Goad (1961-2026)
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- Robert Oscar Lopez: The Inconvenient Witness
- Two Ledgers: Decoding the Gurus and the Price of Talk
- The Pervert’s Progress: Costin Vlad Alamariu and the Making of Bronze Age Pervert
- Curtis Yarvin: A Life Against Democracy
- Mark Helprin: Against the Current
- Mark Brandt: The Man Who Asked Who Else Is Prejudiced
- John T. Jost: The Psychologist of Acquiescence
- Strange Bedfellows in the Academy: Alliance Theory and the Straussian Schism
- Tournier on Desmond Ford
- The Fence and the Blessing: How Jews Have Thought About Gentiles
- Tournier on Luke Ford
- Tournier on The Nostradamus Kid
- An Alliance Theory of Antisemitism
- Tournier on Cinema Paradiso and Desmond Ford
- The Self-Hating Jew
- The Alliance Theory in the Academy
- The Borrowed Robe: How Antisemitism Dresses in Each Age’s Virtue
- A Place For You
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)
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Category Archives: Israel
The Deniable Man: David Barnea and the Two Terrors
In Ashkelon the men came to the grave wearing hats and surgical masks. They lowered a coffin. The director of the Mossad spoke of the dead man and called him M., thirty years in the service, a man of refined … Continue reading
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The Saved You Cannot Count: A Hero-System Essay on Ronen Bar
In June 2026 Ronen Bar (b. 1965) leaves a security conference in the United Arab Emirates by a route his hosts did not plan. Israeli officials warn him that men working for Iran mean to kill him and his wife, … Continue reading
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The General Who Carried a Dead Man’s Name
Mount Herzl, the morning of January 16, 2023. A man climbs the path between the graves to take command of the army. An hour earlier, in the prime minister’s office, they pinned the rank of lieutenant general on him. His … Continue reading
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The Tranquil One
Ernest Becker (1924-1974) wrote in The Denial of Death that a man carries two fears he cannot look at straight. The first is the body. The body fails, the heart stops, the worms come. The second is worse. It is … Continue reading
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No Margin for Error: A Hero-System Essay on Naftali Bennett
In November of 2025 a former prime minister stands at a lectern at Yeshiva University in New York and tells the room something most leaders work to keep their citizens from feeling. A bad prime minister of Belgium or Sweden … Continue reading
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The Plumb Line: Gadi Eisenkot and the Hero System
On the northern border, inside a bomb shelter at Kibbutz Yiftah, a kindergarten runs in shifts. Parents bring children for an hour to play and talk, then take them home, and the next group arrives. Six months earlier a couple … Continue reading
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Lowell Cohn: ‘Shame on the New York Times’ (May 16, 2026)
Lowell Cohn wrote on Substack: Then there’s the issue of dogs penetrating prisoners in the anus. Kristof’s sources say this routinely happens, but according to testimony from experts I read this is highly unlikely when you account for the physiology … Continue reading
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Saba Is Here
On the morning of October 7, 2023, a retired major general rides south out of Tel Aviv with a pistol in his lap and his wife at the wheel. Noam Tibon (b. 1962) commanded paratroopers, a brigade in the West … Continue reading
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The Doorway at Re’im: Aner Shapira and the Word Sacrifice
On the night of October 6, 2023, the eve of Simchat Torah, the festival of rejoicing in the Torah, Aner Elyakim Shapira (2001-2023) sat at his family table in Jerusalem. He was the eldest of seven children. After the meal … Continue reading
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Avishai Margalit: The Philosopher of Humiliation
Avishai Margalit (b. 1939) is an Israeli philosopher and public intellectual whose work reshaped how moral and political philosophy treats dignity, humiliation, memory, compromise, and betrayal. He spent the core of his career at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and … Continue reading
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