Good morning. It’s Friday. The weekend is almost upon us.
On Sunday, a Jewish holiday that was one of my favorites when I was a kind will come to an end, and since I haven’t mentioned it yet, I feel compelled to do so before the opportunity slips away for another year – even though I’m not observing.
It’s Sukkot, a week-long holiday that starts five days after Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day of the Jewish year.
Sukkot is kind of a reprieve from all the heaviness of the Days of Awe, during which Jews reflect and repent and think about mortality; it’s one of the most joyful holidays in Judaism, which might explain why it – along with Purim, another crowd pleaser – is one I remember so fondly.
It’s a celebration of the fall harvest and commemorates the protection in the form of temporary booth-like shelters that G-d provided to the Jewish people when they fled Pharaoh and Egypt to wander in the desert for 40 years. (I’m sure, by the way, in true Jewish fashion, there are those who are going to take issue with this interpretation, as there are certainly others).
The main attraction of Sukkot is the construction of an outdoor booth, covered with foliage but open to the sky, called a Sukkah. The Sukkah traditionally has up to three walls, (usually two walls and a partial third), and once it’s finished, Jews are supposed to observe the holiday by eating all their meals in this structure.
The roof is really the most important part, and it is to be constructed of natural foliage that grows in the ground – bamboo is often used, or pine boughs, or palm branches. (We used to use pine and maple, basically whatever we could find in the yard).
The Sukkah is often decorated with paper chains and drawings of fruit, actual fruit, gourds, lights – you get the idea. Very festive. Very colorful.
If you’re really doing the holiday right, you spend as much time as possible in the Sukkah, even sleeping there, but at a minimum, you eat your meals there.
Since this isn’t the easiest thing for a modern person to do – especially someone who lives in an urban setting without a yard or a balcony, at the very least, many synagogues build communal Sukkahs and open them up to the community.
Another important part of the Sukkot celebration is the use of four species – lulav (palm branch), hadas (myrtle), arava (willow) and etrog (citron) – to bless the Sukkah. These four plants are mentioned in the third book of the Torah, Leviticus.
An interesting aside that you might have heard reported lately – the largest commercial domestic producer of etrogs is a family by the name of Kirkpatrick, which isn’t remotely Jewish. They grow the fruit on their California farm. (They do have a Jewish marketing partner, and his name is Yaakov Rothberg).
All activities that are normally forbidden on Shabbat are also prohibited during Sukkot, which the exception of cooking, baking, transferring fire, and carrying things. (All more or less necessary when you’re going to be preparing most of your food indoors and consuming it outside).
This weekend promises to be great eating outdoors weather to wrap up the holiday. The forecast for today through Sunday is calling for sunny to partly sunny skies with temperatures in the mid-to-high 60s.
Get out there and enjoy it while you can!
In the headlines…
Fresh inflation data showed consumer prices climbed far more quickly than expected and a key measure climbed to a fresh 40-year high, bad news for the Federal Reserve as it tries to bring the most rapid price increases in four decades back under control.
U.S. consumer inflation excluding energy and food accelerated to a new four-decade high in September as prices continued to surge, a sign that persistent cost increases are becoming entrenched in the economy.
The Labor Department said the so-called core measure of the consumer price index, which excludes volatile energy and food price, gained 6.6% in September from a year earlier, up from 6.3% in August. That marked the biggest increase since August 1982.
U.S. stocks closed sharply higher in a head-spinning reversal, after investors decided that fresh evidence of high inflation wasn’t as bad as it initially appeared.
It was the first time that the Dow Jones Industrial Average both fell at least 500 points and rose at least 800 points in a single trading day, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Social Security checks will be 8.7% bigger in 2023, the largest cost-of-living adjustment to benefits in four decades, the Social Security Administration said.
U.S. mortgage rates jumped to their highest level in more than two decades. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 6.92% this week, according to a survey of lenders released by mortgage giant Freddie Mac.
Initial jobless benefit claims rose 9,000 to 228,000 in the week ended October 8, the U.S. Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal has forecast an increase to 225,000.
Claims have increased in three of the last four weeks. This is the highest level of claims since late August. The jump in claims was led by Florida, fresh from the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian.
Economists say tens of thousands of people are likely to file for unemployment benefits in the storm’s wake, but if those workers, many in low-paying service sector industries, don’t come back, the local economies of hard-hit areas could struggle to rebound.
President Joe Biden argued that inflation will get worse if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections next month.
Biden’s appearance this week on the campaign trail in Oregon says as much about Democrats’ struggles in the reliable blue state as it does about his own careful approach to the midterms.
Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz has been spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison by a Florida jury for carrying out the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that claimed 17 lives.
The recommendation is binding. The judge does not have the discretion to impose the death penalty, now that at least one juror found that shooter Cruz should not be executed. The jury deliberated for just seven hours before coming back with the decision.
An armed juvenile killed at least five people, including an off-duty police officer, in a mass shooting yesterday evening in Raleigh, N.C., before being taken into custody by police, city officials said.
A suspect identified as “a white male juvenile” was in custody, the police said. At least two others were wounded, including a police officer, whose injuries were described as “non-life threatening.”
Two police officers were shot and killed and a third was injured after a gunman allegedly ambushed them while they were responding to a 9-1-1 call reporting possible domestic violence between two siblings at a Bristol, Connecticut, home.
Police said preliminary information “appears to point to the 911 call being a deliberate act to lure law enforcement to the scene.” Sources said the gunman carried out an apparent ambush with an AR-15-style rifle when officers arrived.
Long Covid can rob people of health, energy, employment and joy. It may also strip away the equivalent of a decades’ worth of aerobic fitness, according to a large-scale new scientific review of long covid patients and exercise.
The study aggregated results from dozens of earlier experiments to show that people with long covid typically have lower endurance capacity and find working out much harder than other people of similar ages who developed covid but recovered.
The Biden administration said that the COVID-19 public health emergency will continue through Jan. 11 as officials brace for a spike in cases this winter.
The decision follows comments Biden made in September describing the pandemic as over. Some Republican lawmakers said afterward that the administration should wind down its pandemic response and the emergency designation.
The U.S. should prepare for a spike in COVID cases this winter as more people gather indoors and infections already begin to rise in Europe, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha says.
Millions of low-income Americans appear not to have realized they can get potentially massive payments this year from the IRS thanks to a bevy of temporary tax provisions Congress approved in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kevin Spacey’s trial lawyer came down with COVID-19 as a Manhattan judge ruled the case would continue without her.
Sir Ringo Starr, 82, has cancelled the rest of his North American tour after testing positive to Covid-19 again. I’m sure you’ll be surprised as I was. I tested positive again for Covid,” wrote the rock icon in his announcement.
Across the country, reports have been surfacing of people having difficulty obtaining their prescription for Adderall, a medication that can treat ADHD.
BCalifornia, a family-owned and operated business, announced that they have been selected by the State of New York as COVID-19 test kit providers to expand the diagnostic options available to the state government and public entities.
The retooled Covid-19 booster from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE generated a strong immune response against the Omicron substrains BA.4 and BA.5, the companies said. The data offer the first window into how the new shots rolling out now perform.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol voted unanimously to subpoena former President Donald Trump.
“He is required to answer for his actions,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee. “He is required to answer to those police officers who put their lives and bodies on the line to defend our democracy.”
Members of the panel, which held what was expected to be its final hearing before the midterm elections, had previously said they were still considering seeking an interview with Trump or former Vice President Mike Pence.
Elaine Chao, Trump’s Transportation secretary and the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told the Jan. 6 committee that she was shocked by the attack on the Capitol and that “at a particular point…it was impossible for me to continue.”
The Supreme Court denied a request by Trump to allow a so-called special master to review classified government documents that were seized from his Florida residence during an FBI raid in August.
The court’s order, which was a sentence long, was a stinging rebuke to Trump. There were no noted dissents, and the court gave no reasons.
Trump angrily lashed out this week, calling the nation’s legal system a “broken disgrace” after a judge ruled he must answer questions under oath next week in a defamation lawsuit lodged by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that she would “punch [then-President Trump] out” if he came to the Capitol after his rally at the Ellipse.
Days before the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit accusing Trump and his company of fraud and seeking to shut down some of their business in the state, Trump’s lawyers created a new company in Delaware.
Attorney General Tish James asked a state court to freeze the Trump Organization’s New York assets and install an independent monitor in her civil suit targeting the former president and his real estate business.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and five other New York House Republicans have demanded the Justice Department launch an investigation into James after Nikki Haley accused her office of leaking a list of donors to her not-for-profit political group to the media.
Donald Trump Jr., a top Trump Organization executive, told New York investigators he wasn’t involved in preparing the company’s financial statements at the center of a $250 million lawsuit and his knowledge of accounting rules is limited to a college course.
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the figure third in line to the presidency, was taken to the hospital yesterday evening as a “precaution” and was to remain there overnight.
The 82-year-old senator was “not feeling well,” according to his office, and is undergoing tests at a hospital near his home in McLean, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C.
A federal judge blocked a federal law that prohibits the possession of a firearm with an “altered, obliterated or removed” serial number in light of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling expanding gun rights earlier this year.
As she seeks her first full term as governor, Gov. Kathy Hochul has diligently wielded the governor’s office to her political advantage, pulling the levers of government to woo voters, avoiding overtly political events until recently.
Hochul led her Republican challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin, by 10 percentage points in a Marist College poll of the race released yesterday, less than four weeks ahead of Election Day.
The governor’s lead over Zeldin narrowed to eight percentage points among voters who said that they would “definitely vote” in the Nov. 8 election, one of the marquee races for governor in the country.
“There’s an enthusiasm gap, which partially offsets the huge registration advantages that the Democrats have, obviously, in New York,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, told reporters of the poll findings.
Independent voters are aligning with the GOP in critical issues like rising crime and inflation, according to a recent poll.
The margin, which was smaller than in some recent polling of the race, suggested that while Hochul remains on track to retain her post leading New York, the race is hardly over.
The political action committee of the Business Council of New York State endorsed Hochul for a full term.
Zeldin, who has maintained his anti-abortion stance unwaveringly, vows in a new campaign ad that he “will not” move to overturn New York’s abortion rights law if elected governor.
Zeldin promised that bail reform will be gone by next January – if he wins his increasingly tight race against Hochul this November.
Former Lt. Governor Bob Duffy has called on Hochul and leaders in the state legislature to convene a special session to reassess bail reform policies amid rising violence in the City of Rochester.
A new measure signed by Hochul is meant to lessen the burden of student debt fees charged by state agencies in New York.
Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams said they are on the same page when it comes to the city’s migrant crisis and called for federal help handling the influx of asylum seekers.
The Democrats presented a united front as they praised Biden’s new border policies meant to stem the flow of migrants seeking sanctuary in the U.S.
It’s unclear whether the president’s move will effect the midterm elections across the nation, but Hochul says the decision to limit the number of Venezuelan asylum seekers allowed to enter the U.S. will really help New York cope with its migrant crisis.
Hochul won’t help New York City move any of its surging flood of migrants to upstate communities until they get work permits — pushing the politically fraught issue off until long after next month’s election.
Queens is taking the largest share of migrants into emergency shelters set up by the city — fueling what the borough’s president on Thursday called a “powder keg” of crises and creating a “recipe for a social and economic disaster.”
Migrant children who don’t speak any English are “scared” and struggling to cope after being placed at a New York City school where there’s a lack of bilingual teachers.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she’s working with Adams to apply for more federal housing funds to help the Big Apple address the migrant crisis — but refused to call on Biden to secure the border and instead welcomed the surge of asylum seekers.
Hochul and Adams joined up to unveil a gleaming new life sciences hub on a nearly 5-acre site on Manhattan’s East Side today — the largest economic development project of the mayor’s first year in office.
Thousands of cancer patients enrolled in Medicaid in New York state are facing an additional hurdle that could impact the efficacy of the treatment intended to save their lives.
Home care aides in New York will receive a raise in the minimum wage based on the region in which they’re located as the sector has struggled to retain and recruit workers during the pandemic.
New York’s proposed congestion toll on vehicles entering Manhattan below 60th Street will have a “big impact” on the city’s taxi and for-hire vehicle industry, Taxi and Limousine Commission Chair David Do warned.
Big Apple restaurants are gearing up for a smashing holiday season — not up to pre-pandemic numbers, but enough to keep their spirits, and bank accounts, up.
Two borough presidents are demanding an immediate freeze on all eviction cases in which tenants are unable to get a lawyer.
A federal judge refused to release the grandson of former Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro on bail in the near-fatal shooting of his girlfriend — even after the retired pol offered to put up $2.4 million in real estate to secure a bond.
The Statue of Liberty’s crown welcomed visitors for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of New York City in 2020.
A lawyer who has had Knicks season tickets since the 1970s represents clients who are suing Madison Square Garden. So it barred all 60 of his firm’s lawyers from every game, concert and other event at its venues.
Albany is the top place to live in New York state, according to U.S. News and World Report’s latest ranking of best places to live in the U.S. Overall, it ranks 21 in the survey’s 2022-2023 catalog of top American metro areas.
The Albany Community Police Review Board is asking the Common Council to more than quadruple its 2023 budget.
An assembly of local faith leaders will be at the forefront of a climate demonstration today in Albany to call upon big businesses to halt investments in new fossil fuel projects and redirecting funds toward renewable energy.
Basil Seggos, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s commissioner, says he was “pulled” to volunteer after watching the war unfold.
The actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty to a single count of harassment, ending a criminal case that began when one report of sex abuse prompted additional accusations from women across the country.
