This exclusive interview took place the morning of February 3 at the gracious hacienda of Fidel Castro just outside Havana, overlooking the ocean. The idea was initiated by Castro through a signed letter hand-delivered to the offices of the Backward by an officer of the Cuban army. “In the spirit of friendship and brotherhood, I…
Rabbi Barry Freundel, who has pled guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, has revealed that he was recruited as part of a government surveillance program called “MikiLeaks.” The program, run by the National Security Agency, targeted Jewish ritual baths, known as mikvehs, to collect evidence of individuals peeing in the mikveh. Freundel’s claims were backed…
1) To distract from the dripping tap. 2) So that mikveh dippers can time themselves to make sure they don’t take too long to get naked. 3) To make the changing room reassuringly haimish, like a bedroom. 4) Really? A practice dunk is totally normal but having a clock in there is the weird part?…
Joan Rivers, who died in September 2014, had her funeral all planned out in her autobiography. “I want my funeral to be a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action… I want craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene. I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I don’t…
Sixteen-year-old Justin Cohen disappeared during a follow-up interview to the 2013 landmark Pew Research Center’s survey of American Jews. Pew researcher Stephen Ipsell, who conducted the interview, said this is the first time a subject has dematerialized in the middle of a 45-minute session. “I noticed some fading around the edges around 10 minutes in…
Thanks to a last-ditch solution that both saved face for the Israeli leader and avoided a confrontation with the Obama administration for at least three and a half more weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced his planned address to Congress with a speech to the Model Congress at Glencampbell High. On Tuesday afternoon, the…
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