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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: Hasidim
Decoding Hasidic Judaism
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory explains the rise of the Kabbalah Centre as a status-bridging spiritual technology that solved several elite problems at once. Here’s the decoding. First. It converted esotericism into social access Traditional Kabbalah is restrictive, slow, and status-policed. … Continue reading
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Video: Inside the New York Town Invaded by Welfare-Addicted Jews…
Gemini: The video presents a detailed exploration of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic village in upstate New York characterized by its extreme religious devotion, high birth rates, and significant reliance on public assistance. Kiryas Joel functions as a religious enclave where … Continue reading
Status Anxiety In Jewish Life
Gemini: Status anxiety in Jewish life functions through distinct communal “currencies.” Whether the goal is religious stringency, intellectual prestige, or social belonging, the fear of losing standing often drives individuals toward decisions that are financially or psychologically unsustainable. Orthodox Judaism: … Continue reading
A history of Hasidic Jews in Los Angeles outside of Chabad
Grok says: The history of Hasidic Jews in Los Angeles outside of Chabad reflects a smaller but significant thread within the city’s broader Jewish tapestry, shaped by post-World War II migration, the growth of Orthodoxy, and the unique cultural dynamics … Continue reading
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Hasidism: A New History
Here are some highlights from this 2017 book: * ….the trajectory of history did not lead in a straight line from religion to secularism, “darkness” to “light”: religion is as much a part of the modern world as it was … Continue reading
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The Dance Goes On
From the New York Review of Books: Four elements were at the center of the Hasidic sensibility. These elements were given different meanings and permutations in subsequent developments, and the weight of each of them differs from one Hasidic court … Continue reading
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Thank you for your Unorthodox story!
Chaim writes: Dear Debora Feldman, author of Unorthodox, I am a Satmar Chasid in Williamsburg Brooklyn NY, that wants to express my thanks and appreciation on your life’s work, first in your New York Times best seller book, Unorthodox, then … Continue reading
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Friend: “What would be helpful would be if the larger NYC Jewish community pressured the Satmars to stop harassing those biking, and walking, while goy.”
From Daily Mail: Amber Tamblyn comes under fire for attacking Hasidic Jews on Twitter after one nearly hit her with his van while she was walking her one-year-old daughter On Sunday, Amber Tamblyn tweeted that she had nearly been hit … Continue reading
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Growing Up Hasidic — and Racist
Shaindy Urman writes: In the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community I grew up in, racism is a common aspect of life. It is seen as necessary in order to maintain the separation from goyim, or gentiles, and uphold the status of chosen … Continue reading
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WHY ARE ORTHODOX JEWS SO RUDE?
From Jew in the City: I asked a Hasidic friend about this, as most of the complaints I’ve heard about rudeness seem to be about the Hasidic community. (Modern Orthodox students at Yeshiva University were recently named one of the … Continue reading
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