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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:
- Forward: LA Orthodox school’s former guidance counselor will avoid jail time in sex abuse case
- Paul Craig Roberts: From the Treasury to the Margins
- The Gallery Method: Jonathan Swan and the Craft of Insider Reporting
- Maggie Haberman – Taking the Call
- Kyle Sandilands and the Economics of Offense
- After the Kings: Ben Fordham and the Remaking of 2GB Breakfast
- The Entertainer’s Exemption: John Laws and the Price of Trust
- What the Record Shows: David Marr and the Uses of Evidence
- Peopling the Emptiness: The Life of Patrick White
- Crossing Lines: Nick McKenzie and the Limits of Method
- Australian Investigative Journalist Chris Masters: The Man Who Saw In
- 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
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* 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)
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* 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)
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* When Elites Restrict Our Speech, It’s Because They Love Truth, Freedom & Democracy (8-3-25)
Category Archives: Marc B. Shapiro
When Rabbis Used To Slap Students
Marc Shapiro writes: Even though, as mentioned, teachers were never supposed to inflict real pain, I think it is fair to say that the physical punishments over the generations sometimes did get out of hand (see next note). I recall … Continue reading
The Greatness Of Rav Kook
Marc Shapiro writes: In fact, it is only with the publication, uncensored, of R. Kook’s writings that the “lights” of his soul are revealed in all their grandeur. What other spiritual leader with unconventional views could declare that he is … Continue reading
How Should We Deal With Heretics?
Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro writes: For parashat Metzora (p. 231), he quotes R. Kook’s statement in Ezrat Kohen, no. 21, that even if one expresses heretical thoughts, this doesn’t mean that he really is a heretic. Rather, it could be … Continue reading
Do Great Rabbis Simply Repeat Talmudic Tractates To Each Other?
Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro writes: R. Avraham knew an enormous amount about the history of great Torah scholars, and while he didn’t have a critical sense, he knew when a story was nonsense.[20] For example, R. Shalom Schwadron told a … Continue reading
Was The Hatam Sofer An Extremist?
Here’s some background on the 18-19th Century rabbi the Hatam Sofer. Professor Marc B. Shapiro blogs: The Hatam Sofer is often portrayed as both a religious extremist as well as lacking a critical sense. The first assumption, that he was … Continue reading
What If The Sages Are Wrong About Scientific Facts?
Dr. Marc B. Shapiro writes: Neusatz is also explicit that very few aggadot are actually the result of the Sages’ ruah ha-kodesh (p. 32a). He states that Maimonides’ astronomical views in the Mishneh Torah do not come from a holy … Continue reading
Is The Torah Historically Accurate?
Professor Marc B. Shapiro writes: I summarized R. Eleazar Ashkenazi’s position in his Tzafnat Paneah, pp. 29-30, as follows: He also offers another explanation for the lengthy lifespans [in the Torah], namely, that the Torah recorded what the popular belief … Continue reading
What’s The Halacah?
Dr. Marc B. Shapiro writes: Yet my point is that the Jewish people didn’t need any specific halakhic justification, because they knew from their intuitive natural morality what was proper. This is what R. Yehudah Amital meant when he said … Continue reading
When The Masses Have Greater Wisdom Than Torah Scholars
Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro writes Let me also return to the issue of the Jewish masses’ natural morality vs. the rabbinically tuned morality of the scholars, and how according to R. Kook the former is superior to that of the … Continue reading
Why Are Some Biblical Prophecies Written In Ungrammatical Hebrew?
Dr. Marc B. Shapiro writes: Neusatz also has an interesting explanation as to why certain prophecies, in particular those of Ezekiel, are not written in proper grammatical Hebrew. This was already commented on by Abarbanel. Abarbanel simply attributes this to … Continue reading →