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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 Unwinder: George Packer and the Study of American Decline
- Thomas Edsall: The Reporter Who Treated Politics as a System
- Ross Douthat and the Persistence of Belief
- Joseph Kahn and the Stewardship of The New York Times
- The Institutionalist: Dean Baquet and the Remaking of American Journalism
- The Publisher Always Wins – A Jill Abramson Biography
- Howard Zinn – The Historian Who Took Sides
- Linton Besser: A Reporter and the Paper Trail
- Gerald Stone and the Making of Australian Current Affairs
- Paul Barry: A Chronicler of Australian Power
- The Dean of Revolutionary Scholarship: Gordon S. Wood, 1933-2026
- The Last Generalist: Bob Ellis and Australian Public Life
- WEHT to Investigative Journalism?
- The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers
- When Radio Hosts Transition To Podcasts
- The Jeremy Paxman Voice
- The David Dimbleby Voice
- The Krishnan Guru-Murthy Voice
- The Voice of Lyse Doucet (BBC World News)
- The Voice of Yalda Hakim (Sky News)
BEST POSTS:
* American Epistemics (1-19-26)
* The Most Socially Toxic Inconvenient Truths (1-18-26)
* The Luke Ford Genre (1-18-26)
* The Filkins Pivot: Legacy Prestige and the Fracturing of the Chattering Class (1-16-26)
* Decoding The Trump Doctrine (1-4-26)
* If Tatiana Schlossberg were “Tatiana Smith” (12-30-25)
* ‘I’m So Trained’: How The Credential Society Burned Down the Palisades (12-28-25)
* Status Closure and The Lost Generation (12-25-25)
* The Bondi Massacre (12-15-25)
* Sydney Jews Learn That Their Aussie Social Contract Has Become A Suicide Pact (12-15-25)
* Terror in Sydney: Analyzing the “Chanukah by the Sea” Massacre (12-14-25)
* Decoding Nick Fuentes (11-2-25)
* The Landscape of Emotional Sobriety (10-29-30)
* The Rise & Fall Of Air Supply (10-19-25)
* No Kings, No Results: How Elite Pride Replaced Real Progress (10-19-25)
* You Are An Important Soldier In A Great War (9-7-25)
* The Revolt Of The Masses (8-31-25)
* The Covenant of Ashwood (8-24-25)
* If you can’t trust central bankers, then who can you trust? (8-23-25)
* Why Is The Elite Media Singing From The Same Hymnal About The Trump-Putin Summit? (8-17-25)
* Why Do Smart News Operations Sound So Uniformly Dumb So Often? (8-16-25)
* Nobody Is Coming (8-10-25)
* When Elites Restrict Our Speech, It’s Because They Love Truth, Freedom & Democracy (8-3-25)
Category Archives: Marc B. Shapiro
Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History by Marc B. Shapiro
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book for years. Surely it is the most anticipated Jewish book of 2015. When I checked last week, it was the top-selling Judaism book on Amazon.com. Changing the Immutable does not disappoint. It is chock-filled … Continue reading
God, Torah & The Commandments
Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes: R. Kook argued that there is good reason to observe mitzvot even if one does not have a traditional view of the Torah’s authorship. On the one hand, there is nothing surprising in this. After … Continue reading
The Torah’s Position On Voyeurism
Marc B. Shapiro writes: “I am aware of only two times that a woman (other than one’s wife) can be seen without her clothes. One is the sotah, when her top is removed.[18] R. Judah states that if her breasts … Continue reading
Rabbinic Perspective On Dealing With Terrorism
Marc B. Shapiro writes: While I have enormous admiration for R. Bleich’s erudition, not all of his conclusions are widely shared. For example, in a 9/11-type scenario R. Bleich argues that it is forbidden to shoot down an airplane which … Continue reading
What’s The Torah’s Position On Intentionally Injecting Somebody With HIV?
Marc B. Shapiro writes: Finally, I want to discuss a recent article by Rabbi Shalom C. Spira and Dr. Mark A. Wainberg that appeared in Hakirah entitled “Criminalization of HIV Transmission.”[30] They begin by quoting R. Zvi Spitz who argues … Continue reading
Spinoza The Righteous
Marc B. Shapiro writes: R. Hirschensohn discusses Spinoza’s pantheism and states that he was not guilty of two of the big heresies: (1) regarding God as a corporeal being, or (2) avodah zarah. He was simply in error, and that … Continue reading
Burning Mordecai Kaplan’s Siddur In 1945
Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes: This burning of a Jewish book, coming so soon after the end of the Holocaust and so much at odds with the American tradition of freedom of expression, horrified both Jews and non-Jews. The fact … Continue reading
Muslims & Orthodox Judaism
Marc B. Shapiro: “As far as I know there are no significant relations between the Modern Orthodox and Muslims. The Muslim community in the United States has never been forthcoming as it should be in condemning Hamas, Hizballah, and their … Continue reading
Sex With Non-Jewish Women Vs Sex With Jewish Prostitutes
An easy way to see a difference between the Jewish and Christian approaches to sex is to contrast the Jewish state of Israel with Christian countries such as the United States when it comes to prostitution. Using a prostitute is … Continue reading
How Big Of A Sin Is It For A Jewish Man To Be With A Non-Jewish Woman?
Marc B. Shapiro writes: The censorship of this responsum can only have one purpose, namely, so that people don’t learn about how some members of R. Stern’s community (the Hungarian hasidic world) are having sexual relations with non-Jewish women. What … Continue reading