Good Tuesday morning.
The holiest day of the Jewish year – Yom Kippur – starts at sundown tonight and lasts through sundown tomorrow. (Programming note: There will be no Rise and Shine tomorrow, but we’ll be back at it Thursday morning).
Also known as the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur occurs every year on the 10th day of Tishrei, which is the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar.
This day marks the end of the High Holy Days, and offers a chance for people to change their fate through prayer, repentance, and charity.
It is said that the Gates of Heaven open during the Days of Awe – a period that starts with Rosh Hashanah – and close at the end of Yom Kippur, at which time, the fate of those observing the holiday are sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year.
Yeah, it’s heavy and a little daunting. But the good news is that you’ve got the chance to turn things around. And all G-d really asks is that you earnestly make a go of that; we’re not necessarily striving for perfection here. If you come to the effort with an open heart, recognize your wrongdoings and make an honest pledge to try to do better, you’ve done what you can.
Yom Kippur is observed by a 25-hour fast – no food or water from sundown to sundown – and intense prayer.
It is traditional for all Jews beyond the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah to participate in the fast. Anyone whose health might be endangered by a fast – those who are sick or elderly, for example – is not expected to do so. Also pregnant women and/or nursing moms often forgo the fast.
The purpose of the fast is to cleanse the body and to focus on atonement for one’s sins. It is NOT intended to be a punishment for the aforementioned sins.
if you are observing, however, there are some other things from which one is expected to abstain – washing or bathing, perfumes or deodorants (technically, one is prohibited from anointing the body with oil, which isn’t really a traditional thing to do these days), wearing leather, and having sex.
Sadly, we’ve got a lot to atone for, collectively speaking. This Yom Kippur comes as antisemitism is on the rise – not just here in the U.S., but around the world. Not even in synagogue, a sacred and holy space for prayer and reflection, are Jews safe. (Actually, hate is on the rise, writ large, don’t think for one minute that I’m overlooking that fact).
Two years ago, a synagogue in Berlin Germany was targeted by a white supremacist during the High Holy Days.
And two years before that, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, killing at least 11 congregants and wounding four police officers and two others. The suspect in that attack – the deadliest on Jewish people in U.S. history – has finally gotten a trial date, and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
As we head into this holiest of holy days, I am trying not to dwell on the negative, though it might be difficult to tell that from the tone of this post. The world is in a precarious place. Is it worse than at other times in history? I can’t tell, because I wasn’t around then, but the outlook seems awfully negative to me.
But there is still beauty. There is still love. There is still art, and laughter, and genius, and nature, and, of course, dogs. Always dogs.
That’s what I’ll be trying to think about this Yom Kippur as I ask for forgiveness from my trespasses and seek forgiveness from those I have trespassed upon. For those observing, I wish you an easy fast, and to be sealed in the book of life.
It will be appropriately cloudy with temperatures only in the low 60s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden told the Rev. Al Sharpton that he will seek a second term in a private conversation at the White House last month, Sharpton informed his National Action Network staff in Washington later that day.
Biden received poor marks on items many Americans deem to be pivotal issues ahead of the midterm elections, including inflation, according to a new poll.
Approval polls show Biden at an average 43% approval at the end of September, the highest rating he’s received since January. Fifty-three percent of voters disapprove of his performance.
The interaction is said to have happened between the two on September 2, when Biden met with leaders from legacy Black civil rights organizations, including Sharpton.
If Biden does run, the challenge before him will be simple but profound: Prove to the American people that he can campaign all over the country for the entirety of the campaign.
Five days after Hurricane Ian ripped its way across Florida to the Carolinas, the scale of its destruction is still coming into full focus. AT least 74 are dead, thousands without power or water, and economic damage is estimated at well over $100 billion.
Biden surveyed storm damage and met with families and community leaders in Puerto Rico, and announced more than $60 million in funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for disaster recovery and preparedness for future storms.
Biden jabbed at his predecessor, Donald Trump, before heading to Puerto Rico to examine damage caused by Hurricane Fiona last month — telling reporters the island was not “taken very good care of” following Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Biden was ridiculed on Twitter after claiming he was “politically” raised in the Puerto Rican community during a press conference held on the U.S. island territory.
The U.S. will take “further action” against “perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters” in Iran.
Biden is showing no interest in loosening federal restrictions that have left states in charge of developing how the multibillion-dollar U.S. cannabis industry grows. The nation’s courts may ultimately force the issue.
A new Biden administration report on abortion access in the U.S. describes how widely the procedure has been curtailed in the roughly 100 days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, according to excerpts from the memo that were obtained by ABC News.
The tens of millions of Americans who’ve been celebrating news of student loan forgiveness are now stuck in limbo as Republicans mount legal challenges to the Biden administration’s plan.
Former President Donald Trump is suing CNN for defamation and asking for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000 and punitive damages of $475 million, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday.
According to the lawsuit, Trump alleged CNN has maliciously made false and defamatory statements about him. He is seeking $475 million in punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to be determined at trial.
Trump’s complaint against CNN was filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, and alleges a “campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander” that, he asserts, has recently escalated “as CNN fears the plaintiff will run for president in 2024.”
Trump threatened legal action against various news media outlets and the House select committee investigating the Jan 6., 2021, attack on the Capitol on the same day his legal team filed a lawsuit against CNN.
At least one member of Trump’s legal team has hired her own attorney — and allies are urging another to follow suit.
Defense lawyers said the far-right militia had assembled ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to await what they hoped would be a decision by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
“That was their goal, to stop by whatever means necessary the lawful transfer of presidential power, including by taking up arms against the United States government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said in opening statements in the trial.
In its first argument of the Supreme Court’s new term and the first to feature its newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justices considered a dispute over the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to police some kinds of water pollution.
This term, the Supreme Court is hearing a case about whether Alabama’s newly drawn congressional maps violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race.
Though many Americans are still reeling from the Dobbs decision, the 6-3 conservative majority court has chosen a set of highly combustible cases that court watchers believe are likely to break along ideological lines.
The Supreme Court said it won’t take up two cases that involved challenges to a ban enacted during the Trump administration on bump stocks, the gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the sweeping legal immunity that shields internet companies from lawsuits over user-generated content, a case with potentially enormous consequences for social media.
The case, brought by the family of a woman killed in a terrorist attack, argues that YouTube’s algorithm recommended videos inciting violence.
History-making appointee Brown Jackson settled into her role as the Supreme Court’s newest justice by posing frequent questions during arguments on her first day of hearing cases.
A highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer found sexual misconduct, verbal and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer, too.
Reports from players about sexual, verbal and emotional misconduct by their coaches were repeatedly ignored by the league and federation. Abuse was often seen as normal behavior because of practices that are entrenched in the game throughout the sport.
Emerging Covid-19 variants and waning immunity are likely to push infections higher in the northern hemisphere as influenza also makes a comeback.
A neurologist at a prestigious U.S. research institute has developed an experimental COVID treatment he calls “true revenge” that weaponizes the virus against itself.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer maintain a country-by-country list of travel advisories related to Covid-19, the agency said.
The CDC said that “as fewer countries are testing or reporting COVID-19 cases, (its) ability to accurately assess the COVID-19 (travel health notice) levels for most destinations that American travelers visit is limited.”
The announcement came as data reporting about the pandemic has been scaled back around the world.
Norwegian Cruise Line announced that it will suspend all Covid-19 testing, masking and vaccination requirements.
Passengers will no longer need to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test result to board, though the changes are subject to local requirements at various destinations.
Ringo Starr has cancelled shows in North America after the former Beatles drummer tested positive for COVID-19.
Trump wanted to wear a shirt with a Superman logo and reveal it after seeking medical care for COVID-19, according to a coming book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
New York City will make or break Gov. Kathy Hochul’s first campaign at the top of the ticket.
The MTA has finished building 9.8 miles of new track that officials say will dramatically expand Long Island Railroad service, Hochul said.
Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s name was not uttered at the “All board” Hochul press conference, but the former three-term Democrat made sure to take a bow right afterwards.
Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about the Hochul administration’s major COVID test purchase that’s sure to remain one of the major issues in the closing weeks of the 2022 gubernatorial campaign.
GOP gubernatorial nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin says there will be no pay-to-play in the executive mansion if he is elected as critics have charged of Hochul, saying he will bar himself from meeting with any campaign donors that have business before the state.
Health officials are facing a number of obstacles to containing polio as it continues to circulate in New York State and threatens to become endemic.
New York gambling regulators named officials to a board to oversee siting for casinos in the New York City metropolitan area as the state seeks to expand commercial gaming halls to a lucrative market beyond upstate communities.
New York is launching an Office of Language Access in an effort to codify a law meant to expand accessibility for non-English or limited English proficiency speakers.
More than $3 billion was either saved or recovered through efforts to curtail waste and fraud in the state’s Medicaid program last year, Acting Medicaid Inspector General Frank Walsh said.
The state should put more funding into vocational programs, including regional high schools for career and tech courses, state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said as the Board of Regents began setting its budget priorities.
Health care providers offering crisis stabilization services would receive increased aid and funding under a measure proposed by state Sen. Peter Harckham as New York seeks to reduce the effects of addiction and substance abuse disorder.
Multiple New York Republican and conservative groups are suing state elections officials in an attempt to reverse a 2021 law that expedites the state’s absentee ballot voting process, claiming that the statute will enable more voter fraud.
An accused gang member who dodged murder charges in the 2015 killing of an aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo scored another court victory when a jury acquitted him of federal gun possession charges connected to the fatal shooting.
The Cuomo-era Office of Faith-Based Community Development Services has little to no accountability, and some familiar with its work deemed it as ineffective in practice, while a boon to those organizations in theory.
Former CNN star Chris Cuomo returned to television sets Monday night with a primetime show on NewsNation called “CUOMO” that debuted with HBO host Bill Maher as his first guest.
“I have been humbled by what happened and I am also hungry to do better in a way that I was not before,” Cuomo said on the set of his new gig. He stopped short of apologizing for his actions, but said he had learned from them.
The head of the DCCC, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, used more than $7,000 in taxpayer and donor funds to employ his husband’s personal trainer — leading to calls for an ethics probe.
The parents of the FDNY paramedic fatally stabbed in Queens confronted Mayor Eric Adams at their daughter’s wake yesterday and demanded he get control of the Big Apple’s spiraling crime crisis.
Adams blasted the “far left” for its inaction and “silence” regarding the devastating impact of the US border crisis on New York City.
Adams revealed that he made the call to let his public safety deputy, Philip Banks, have an NYPD security detail — and dismissed the notion that the police deployment would need a green light from the department’s Intelligence Bureau.
Several days after the city began assembling an emergency facility to temporarily house single adult asylum-seekers, parts of the site flooded with inches of water over the weekend, yet Adams initially remained undeterred.
Late yesterday, Adams reversed course and announced the city would set up a new tent camp on Randalls Island in Manhattan due to the flooding at the Bronx site.
Before coming to City Hall, one of the top contenders to become Adams’ next chief of staff. Tiffany Raspberry, ran a lobbying firm that was fined often and repeatedly for failing to comply with lobbying disclosure requirements, a review of public records shows.
Adams didn’t have much new information about emergency relief efforts to address the city’s influx of asylum seekers, but he did have blame for the far ends of the political spectrum.
Adams and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said existing infrastructure, such as vacant city newsstands, will be used as “Street Deliveristas Hubs” where delivery workers can shelter from the elements and charge their electronic bikes and cellphones.
New York spends nearly twice the national average on school aid per student — “without delivering above-average results in achievement,” budget watchdogs said.
Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels plan to plaster the Queens district of defund-the-police City Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán today with fliers urging local residents to call the cops when they need help.
Former NYC Council Speaker Chris Quinn writes about her cancer battle.
Employees trying to organize a union at Amazon’s Schodack fulfillment center are filing a federal complaint over a phone interview between the company’s Oregon HR “Central Investigations” office and an employee leading the Capital Region organizing effort.
A man was shot and killed Sunday night on Central Avenue in Albany, becoming the city’s second homicide victim in less than a week.
The company that owns the Saratoga Casino racino and hotel has purchased a casino and hotel operation in Natchez, Miss.
After the father of a Marist College student was shot to death in the lobby of a hotel in Poughkeepsie, officers made an alarming discovery: They found bomb-making components in the room booked by the two men charged in connection with the killing.
The suspects who were arrested Sunday after a deadly shooting at a hotel near Marist College in Poughkeepsie have gang ties, police said.
The victim, Paul Kutz, was a 53-year-old CPA from Long Island. He was killed while standing inside the lobby of a local Courtyard Marriott on Sunday morning.
This past weekend, the national and New York State records were broken for the largest pumpkin. The winner weighed in at 2,554 pounds and was grown by Scott Andrusz from Williamsville.
