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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
The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and his Circle by Norman Solomon
Marc B. Shapiro writes: The history of Torah study is marked by various trends, such as Tosafistic analysis, the combination of philosophy and Talmud study, and pilpul. In this century, it is the “Brisker” method of Talmud study which stands … Continue reading
IS MODERN ORTHODOXY MOVING TOWARDS AN ACCEPTANCE OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM?
Marc Shapiro writes in 2019: If you take Louis Jacobs at his word, then the eruption of the so-called ‘‘Jacobs Affair’’ in the early 1960s was a big surprise to him. Some might find this difficult to believe, since how … Continue reading
Pets on Shabbat, Rabbi Morenu, and Epidemics
Orthodox Jews traditionally have not kept pets. Marc B. Shapiro blogs: * R. Moshe did not regard pets as muktzeh. It would thus be permissible to handle your own cat that lives in your home, but not to do so … Continue reading
POST-MOSAIC ADDITIONS TO THE TORAH?
Marc B. Shapiro blog: * One of the biggest theological changes in Orthodoxy in the last decades—perhaps the sources collected in Limits were significant in this regard—is the acknowledgment that asserting limited post-Mosaic additions to the Torah is not to … Continue reading
Prof Marc Shapiro – Subjectivity and the Role of Values in Halacha
How does a Jew atone for apostasy?
Marc B. Shapiro blogs: * Since I just mentioned R. Hayyim Eleazar Shapira, let me mention something else he says that is fascinating. In the past two posts I discussed apostate rabbis. It is bad enough when an average person … Continue reading
The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised by Marc Shapiro
Conservative Conversions
Marc B. Shapiro blogs: Of particular interest to me was R. Yissachar Dov Hoffman’s article on the practice of a number of great Torah sages of prior generations not to kiss their children. Such a practice is so much against … Continue reading
Tales Of The Gadolim
Marc B. Shapiro writes: * Once R. Jacob David Wilovsky of Slutzk visited R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk and told him that he wanted to also visit the Rogochover. R. Meir Simhah attempted to dissuade him, saying that the Rogochover … Continue reading
Using A Key Card On Shabbat
Marc B. Shapiro writes: * Fixler is a student of R. Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, and I used some of the time we were together to clarify the details of R. Rabinovitch’s position that there is no halakhic prohibition in using … Continue reading