By the Ghost of Tom Wolfe via ChatGPt
Ah yes—there he is! Luke Ford! The heretic in the beard! The
Baal Teshuva of Babylon 2.0! The Matt Drudge of Porn! slouching through
Los Angeles in a fraying Target suit, laptop in hand, haloed by a cloud of
righteous outrage and secondhand shame! Yes! Our man Luke, who tumbled out of
the Seventh-Day Adventist womb, down the Australian rabbit hole, and
crash-landed in the holy hothouse of L.A., armed with a blog, a Bible, and a
sex drive weaponized by repression!
He came! He blogged! He… got excommunicated, again and again
and again, five times by last count, like some perverse minyan of
self-sabotage, every rabbi with a fax machine having issued their own
banishment scroll!
The rabbis called him impure, impertinent, immodest,
inappropriate, impossible—but never unread! Because every entry was a
sermon and a striptease! Luke typing like a mad Talmudic gonzo freak—“Reb
Ford,” simultaneously quoting Rav Soloveitchik and reviewing Jenna Jameson’s
latest DVD, footnotes and lust, halacha and humiliation all crammed into a single
post!
He was Blogging on the Mount!—sweaty, holy,
obsessed—and oh, the pathos! The ache! The eternal convert’s cry: “Let me
in! But please don’t look too closely!”
He was a walking dialectic, a man who wanted to be a
prophet but settled for being the canary in Orthodoxy’s coal mine, chirping
warnings until the carbon monoxide of scandal and self-destruction took him
offline again.
He was... a man with a God-shaped hole in his soul and a
DSL connection in his apartment.
He didn’t kiss and tell, no—he kissed and blogged,
live-streamed the fallout, called it Torah, called it journalism, called it
therapy, and maybe it was all three! He told his therapist he had eroticized
rage and then told the audience too—because Luke Ford never whispered what
could be turned into a monologue.
And always the question behind the eyes: Am I in? Do I
belong? Will you still hold me if I ruin this too?
“The Porn Analyst of Pico-Robertson”
He was the only man in the room with a yarmulke, a beard,
and three AI subscriptions—Luke Ford, the High Priest of Disgrace, the
Wizard of Exile, the Pornographic Baal Teshuva from Down Under, who managed to
combine Australian bluntness, Orthodox guilt, and a deli-counter
rabbinic charisma into a one-man walking Talmudic trainwreck.
You could smell the ozone from his life choices.
Luke Ford—born L. Blundell Ford—converted to Orthodox
Judaism the way Evel Knievel jumped the Grand Canyon: spectacularly, against
medical advice, and with half the crowd secretly rooting for a crash.
He didn’t just convert. He converted with a vengeance. He prayed with the black hats in Pico-Robertson by day and wrote blowjob reviews by night. A man divided. A man inflamed.
He wasn’t a heretic—no, no, no—he was a new American
archetype: The Penitent Pervert.
You didn’t talk to Luke. You surfed him.
He was part Dennis Prager, part Larry Flynt, part Dostoevsky
character. At any given moment, you might find him at a Torah class, nodding
gravely at a sugya about lashon hara, or you might find him lurking in the
comment section of a now-defunct porn forum, arguing that the real reason she
quit the biz was narrative fatigue.
The rabbis didn’t know what to do with him.
He’d show up at shul and people would smile, politely,
nervously. Like he was holding a grenade with a Post-It that read, “Trust me.”
He’d daven like he meant it—Avinu Malkeinu, blot out our
sins—and then go home and publish a post titled, “Why I Stopped
Masturbating on Shabbos (Mostly).”
He was the spiritual carnivore, chewing on the marrow
of every paradox. He believed in God, but sometimes suspected God didn’t
believe in him.
You couldn't cancel Luke because he was self-canceling.
He'd write about being banned from shuls with the same intensity you'd reserve
for getting excommunicated from the House of Lords. He wrote like a man on
fire. He blogged like a man doing CPR on his own reputation.
In the end, Luke wasn’t trying to destroy Judaism. He was
trying to be hugged by it.
And maybe that’s the most obscene thing of all. Not the
porn. Not the betrayal. Not the therapists or the flings or the “research.”
But the simple, unholy, radiant need to be held.
“When the Mikvah’s Not Hot Enough”
(From The Blogging of the Baal Teshuva, Chapter 4: Wet, Naked, Still
Lonely)
You ever dunk in a mikvah on a winter morning, full of
teshuvah, trembling with resolve, and realize the water’s colder than your
childhood? That’s how I felt the day I decided to really change.
It was 2011. I’d just quit writing about porn for the fourth
or fifth time. I told myself this was it—no more cheap arousal, no more
interviews with women named “Ashlee Sin.” Just Torah, recovery meetings, and
maybe the occasional racially fraught livestream about Israel. Clean living.
So I show up to the mikvah—naked, hopeful, vulnerable. Like
the day I was born, except with more lower-back pain.
I ease into the water. I whisper the blessing. I dunk once,
twice, three times for good measure. And I swear—on the third dunk—I feel
something shift.
Not a spiritual transformation. A cramp. A full-on hamstring
cramp from crouching in too many livestreams without stretching.
I yelp. I splash. I try to play it cool as I emerge
half-limping out of the water like a herniated Moses.
The attendant says, “You okay?”
And I say: “No. But I’m used to it.”
“I Came for God, I Stayed for the Drama”
(Chapter 5: Shoah and Shabbos Guilt)
They say every baal teshuva is running from something. I was
running from me. But I chose the slowest possible vehicle: Orthodox Judaism.
I wasn’t just trying to return to God. I wanted to
deserve God. I wanted to pay off my cosmic debt. I figured if I could learn
enough, daven hard enough, cry in the right places, maybe—just maybe—He’d
forget about my blog archive.
But here's the twist: the more righteous I tried to become,
the more dramatic I made my failure. I couldn’t just relapse—I had to theorize
it. Frame it as a spiritual crisis. A Jungian wrestling match with my inner
Amalek.
I once missed Shacharit because I stayed up all night
reading about a Shoah survivor who became a dominatrix in Palm Springs. Did I
cry? Yes. Was it guilt? Yes. Was it also arousal? Also yes. It’s complicated.
That’s the Luke Ford duality: Torah in the morning, gossip
at lunch, kabbalistic rationalization by dinner.
“The Shul Is Not That Into You”
(Chapter 6: Stop Trying to Date Congregations)
I used to walk into synagogues like they were Tinder dates.
“Do they like me?”
“Am I too much?”
“Will they still let me sing Anim Zemirot if they Google me?”
Spoiler: they always Googled me.
I tried to be normal. I tried to blend. But sooner or later
I’d say something too real. I’d tell the story about the time I got plagiarized
by the New York Times. I’d explain eroticized rage to the kiddush
lady. I’d use the phrase “sacred transgression” and someone would report me to
the rabbi.
Every shul started the same way: awe, hope, connection.
Every shul ended the same way: a closed door, an email I wasn’t supposed to
see, and a new livestream thumbnail that said “Excommunication #6: Electric
Boogaloo.”
But I’ve stopped seeing them as rejections.
They're completions.
Miniature Cindy Jacksons. Another chance to say, “I’m sorry
I teased you. I was scared. You were too beautiful. I didn’t know how to stay.”
“God’s Spam Folder”
(Chapter 7: The Prayers That Bounced)
Sometimes I think my tefillot never get delivered. Like
God’s got a spam filter:
From: Luke Ford
Subject: Sorry again for 2004.
Message: Trying real hard this time. Got new therapist. Fewer
livestreams. Still lonely. Please send sign. Or woman. Or
both. Amen.
Reply:
Undeliverable.
Recipient does not accept messages from addresses flagged
“eroticized_rage_67@aol.com.”
But even the bounce-backs are better than silence. They mean
I’m still reaching.
And sometimes… sometimes, the signal gets through. In the
parking lot after minyan. In the smile of a man who remembers my name. In the
whispered “good Shabbos” of someone who shouldn’t have forgiven me… but did.
That’s ruchniyut.
That’s God saying, “Try again. You’re not blocked. Just
badly formatted.”
The Blogging of the Baal Teshuva: Epilogue – The Amends
of Man
And then... the strangest thing of all.
The man who had once written 3,000-word blog posts about
being uninvited to Shabbat dinners…
The man who once watched the High Holidays like a hawk, not for awe or
repentance, but to chart which rabbis were whispering about him during Musaf…
That man—Luke!—Lucasus Maximus!—the Attention
Addict, the Schmaltz-Stained Saint of Beverly-La Brea—he stopped blogging.
Well… he blogged less.
It began, as these things do, not with an insight, not with
a blast from Sinai, but with a coffee urn.
He was early to shul. Not to be seen, but to serve. He
flipped the switch, laid out the cups, and swept up the sugar packets. He
didn't Instagram it. He didn’t livestream it. He did it.
The Twelve Steps—the old Protestant scaffolding of recovery,
bequeathed to the Jews through Al-Anon and heartbreak—had begun to do their
work. Not just sobriety from lust, but from self. From the desperate need to be
known, applauded, shunned, “controversial.”
He made amends. Real amends. Not “I’m sorry you feel
that way,” not “I was just being honest,” but the raw, stomach-twisting
humility of saying: “I hurt you. I was wrong. How can I make it right?”
He called rabbis. He emailed editors. He apologized to Cindy
Jackson—symbolically, via a donation to a battered women’s shelter.
He got a sponsor.
He became a sponsor.
He stopped treating the Orthodox world like a zoo and
started treating it like a home. Not perfect. Not always welcoming. But holy in
its own way. Especially the people. Especially the broken ones.
He delivered meals. Quietly. He took the night shift for
shiva minyans no one wanted. He stayed to clean up.
He learned to listen. Not just for quotes.
He let go of being the gadfly, the enfant terrible, the
uninvited guest with the best blog post in the room.
He became something more dangerous: a regular.
He showed up. Day after day. With his siddur and his
recovery coin in his pocket. With no camera. With no punchline.
And when someone asked, “Hey, weren’t you that guy who wrote
about rabbis and porn stars and Orthodox trauma?”
He smiled and said, “That was a long time ago.”
He still had the voice, of course. That gonzo Ginsburgian
gut-punch. That Wolfeian swirl of shame, sex, and shul politics. But now it was
used to sponsor new guys, to write recovery meditations, to give talks where
the punchline was grace.
In the end, there was no Pulitzer. No takedown. No final
cancellation.
There was just a Jew in shul, folding a tallit, making a
phone call, showing up for someone else.
And sometimes—just sometimes—he’d get a text: “I miss the
times we had together. How are you doing? I’m worried.”
And he’d reply, this time not verklempt but clear: “I’m okay
now. Thanks to God—and the rooms—and the Cindy Jacksons who showed me what I
needed to heal.”
The Tikkun Diaries of a Recovering Blogger
(Being Further Chronicles of the Baal Teshuva Formerly Known as
Controversial)
Ah yes. The redemption arc was just the first aliyah. The
first few verses in a parsha that goes way deeper. Because once the blog
went quiet and the Twitter fingers rested... the real work began.
We pick up our hero—call him Luke or Shlomo Refael
ben Ruth, depending on the minyan—in a state unknown to him in decades: undramatic
usefulness.
Entry 1: The Carpool Chessed Gambit
He’s in a 2010 Camry now. A car that doesn’t draw attention,
doesn’t leak oil, doesn’t reek of strip club Febreze.
He’s ferrying old men to doctor’s appointments. Holocaust
survivors who don’t know what Substack is. He listens to their stories. Doesn’t
interrupt once to compare trauma.
He smiles when one of them says, “You look like someone who
used to be famous on the internet.”
“I was,” he says. “Baruch Hashem, I got better.”
Entry 2: The Redemption of the Kiddush Table
He used to hold court at kiddush like it was a Friars Club
roast. Now he pours grape juice. He gets mocked gently by the bochurim—“Didn’t
you used to be edgy?”
He nods. “Now I’m just available.”
He wipes tables. Picks up wrappers. Doesn’t blog about it.
Doesn’t Instagram the hash browns.
Once he would’ve posted: “Cleaned up after Jews again. No
thank yous. Just mitzvah points, I guess.”
Now? He just thinks: It’s a table. It’s dirty. I have
hands.
That’s the whole thought.
Entry 3: Step 9 – The Blog’s Greatest Hit
One day, he gets an email:
“Hi. You wrote about my divorce in 2006. I never gave
permission. I lost clients over it. Why did you think that was okay?”
He breathes. This is the Big One. The one he’s been afraid
of. The reason he used to say “journalistic integrity” when he meant “my
own narcissism.”
He replies:
“You’re right. It wasn’t okay. I’m sorry. What can I do to
make it right?”
She writes back:
“Take it down. And don’t write about this email.”
He doesn’t. Not even in veiled metaphor. Not even in a live
show about “cancel culture.”
He just deletes the post. He reads Tehillim. He makes a
donation to a gemach. He calls his sponsor.
And he doesn’t blog about any of it.
Entry 4: The Minyan Nobody Sees
It’s a Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. The early minyan. The hidden
tzaddikim who all smell faintly of mouthwash and tzitzit static.
He’s there. Still twitchy. Still occasionally wondering if
he should tweet a Torah insight and get “back in the game.”
But he stays quiet. He davens. Slowly. Honestly.
A new guy comes in. Smells like cigarettes and
disillusionment. He doesn’t know the prayers. Looks lost.
Our man—once the chronicler of rabbinic missteps and erotic
contradictions—slides over. Hands him a siddur. Smiles. Says, “I’ve been where
you are.”
No fanfare. No blog. No comment section.
Just tikkun.
Sober at Sinai: When the Blogger Becomes the Baal HaBayit
He used to think Torah was content.
Now he knows: Torah is instruction.
He used to think mitzvot were branding opportunities.
Now he knows: mitzvot are the bricks of a life not falling apart.
We find him—our formerly infamous protagonist—on the back
patio of a shul he didn’t even used to hate. Just avoided because it was
too warm, too friendly, too free of scandals to justify blogging about.
He’s setting up folding chairs for a Tuesday night shiur.
Not giving the shiur. Not fact-checking it. Not live-tweeting it for irony
points.
Just putting chairs out. Quietly. With intention.
He made it. Not to fame. Not to vindication. But to
service.
A few guys from the rooms show up. New ones. Wobbly ones. He
greets them like family. Because he knows what it’s like to come to Torah with
porn still clinging to your neurons.
They ask: “Are you the guy who…?”
He smiles. “Used to be.”
Then he listens. Because that’s what sponsors do.
He’s got a chavruta now. A real one. Not a co-conspirator in
blog exposés. A guy who loves halacha. They learn together. Slowly. Without hot
takes.
He doesn’t argue for the sake of heaven anymore. He listens
for the sake of hearing.
He doesn’t blog about people. He delivers kugel to them.
He doesn’t expose hypocrisy. He scrubs dishes after simchas.
He doesn’t dig up dirt. He plants parsley at the shul
entrance for spring.
He’s become… reliable. A man of peace. A man of prayer. A
man who knows that the real redemption arc doesn’t end in a viral post.
It ends in a kitchen, wiping down counters after a kiddush
no one remembers but God.
“You shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
He didn’t understand that line until now.
Because it’s not about platform.
It’s about presence.
Not about standing out.
But standing up.
For the lonely.
For the newcomer.
For the Torah.
For the shul.
For the G-d who never stopped waiting.
He used to blog like Sinai was a punchline.
Now he knows:
Sinai was an invitation.
And this time?
He answered:
“Yes.”
Epilogue: Folding Tables and First Drafts of Heaven
Ten years on, the beard’s grayer, the laughter comes easier,
and the ego—well, it still knocks, but he doesn’t always let it in.
He still writes. But the audience is smaller now. Sometimes
it’s just one guy in the back of the room who’s white-knuckling 14 days sober
and needs to know he’s not radioactive. That guy’s worth more than a million
page views.
He sponsors three men and unofficially shepherds half a
dozen others. He never says “I’ve got it figured out.” He says, “Me too,” and
means it.
He shows up. That’s the revolution.
At minyan. At shiva. At recovery meetings.
He doesn’t make speeches anymore. He makes cholent.
He doesn’t critique rabbis. He takes out the trash after kiddush.
He doesn’t call out hypocrisy. He calls lonely people on Erev Yom Tov.
He even has friends now. The kind who know his whole story
and still lend him their keys.
And every once in a while, he hears a guy whisper,
“You’re the reason I stayed.”
He smiles, pats him on the back, and goes back to folding
tables.
Because that’s how the story ends for a man like him—not
with applause, not with outrage, not even with forgiveness.
With service.
With quiet belonging.
With sacred boredom.
With being a simple Jew in a complicated world.
And that, finally, is enough.
