Good last-Monday-before-Christmas morning!
I hope you 1) survived the massive snowstorm that was sort of a bust (unless you lost power due to the inordinately heavy snow, in which case it was a big deal), and 2) have all of your holiday shopping done and dusted.
If you’re a Jew, you have seven more shopping days to get it right. Happy second day of Chanukah!
Regardless of how you spell it, and it seems there are about as many ways to do so are there are traditions for celebrating, Hanukah, (which means “dedication” in Hebrew) commemorates the rededication during the second century B.C. of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
That is where, as legend has it, Jews rose up against their Greek-Syrian oppressors in what is known as the Maccabean Revolt.
The short version: There was this jerk of a Syrian ruler named Antiochus who outlawed the practice of Judaism and directed everyone to worship Greek gods. HIs soldiers sacked Jerusalem and desecrated the holy temple by erecting an alter to Zeus and sacrificing pigs inside it.
This didn’t sit well with a Jewish priest named Mattathias and his five sons – one of whom was Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee – who led a revolt against the Syrians.
Judah took over as leader of this effort when his father died, and employing largely guerilla warfare tactics, managed to drive the much larger and better equipped Syrian army out of Jerusalem.
Judah ordered the temple cleansed and rebuilt and called for the gold candelabrum known as a “menorah”, with seven branches represented knowledge and creation, to be kept burning every night.
There was only enough untainted oil, technically speaking, for one night’s worth of light, but thanks to what is now known as the “Hanukkah miracle,” the menorah burned for eight nights.
Hence, the eight nights of Chanukah, the festival of lights.
From a religious standpoint, Hanukah is a lesser holiday because it is not mentioned in the Bible, but rather in the Book of Maccabees. Yet it is widely celebrated and is one of the more popular Jewish holidays, in part, I personally believe, because it’s an alternative to Christmas and helps make Jewish kids feel less left out and sorry for themselves around this time of year.
I speak from personal experience when I say that there was little less depressing for an under-10-year-old kid than to wake up on Christmas morning and known that pretty much 99.9 percent of one’s friends were in the midst of a frenzy of gift-opening and cinnamon roll eating while you made do with morning cartoons and a bowl of soggy cereal.
Sorry, I’m not sorry for admitting this. All I wanted when I was a little kid was to experience the joy of a Christmas stocking. For some reason, it was THAT, not the prospect of presents piled up under the tree, but an oversized sock filled with useless knick-knacks, that really appealed to me.
We did have some Christian friends who invited me annually to their tree-trimming party, where I was allowed to stay up late and sample a small cup of mulled wine (so delicious, and much better than eggnog, IMHO), and help select which of their vast collection of ornaments would be placed in a spot of honor of the tree that year.
We also strung endless chains of popcorn and cranberries and ate cheese straws and cracked nuts by the fire and listened to holiday music.
It was, in my recollection, perfectly heavenly.
Oh, but sorry, I digress. We were talking about Chanukah, weren’t we?
There’s one thing about Chanukah that I always really enjoyed: The food.
First and foremost, that means latkes – potato pancakes cooked in a copious amount of oil – are traditionally served with a dollop of sour cream and some applesauce on the side. (The connection of latkes to the whole “eight days of oil” miracle thing turns out to be a hoax, which is disappointing).
The “correct” or “best” method of making these is a hotly debated subject.
Some like onions in their latkes, others find them abhorrent. I’m more or less agnostic on that particular question, though I really do believe the best latke is the one someone else makes in their kitchen because frying things in oil is both smelly and dirty, and baked latkes just aren’t the same.
Something we didn’t eat in my house, but apparently are delicious in their own right are sufganiyot (pronounced “soof-gah-nee“) – round, deep-fried yeast doughnuts that are filled with jam and sprinkled with powdered sugar. (Again with the fried food; you can see the pattern forming here).
And last, but not least, of course, there’s Hanukkah gelt, chocolate “coins” wrapped in gold foil that are sometimes used as fodder in the betting game of dreidel. The chocolate, at least in my opinion, is rather low quality – just your very basic milk chocolate that is nothing to write home about. But it was always fun to get the little punches full of “money.”
It’s going to be a pretty basic day from a weather standpoint – a lot of clouds early on, giving way to a few peeks of sunshine later in the day, with a chance of snow flurries and temperatures in the mid-30s.
If you’re planning to travel this holiday season, be forewarned: An Arctic air mass will descend upon the U.S. this week with plenty of precipitation and dangerously low temperatures, making for potentially nightmarish holiday travel conditions, forecasters say.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden signed a one-week stopgap funding bill on Friday to avert a government shutdown, extending the deadline until December 23 to allow congressional negotiators more time to finalize a full-year funding deal.
Biden and his family held a private memorial service yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and their baby daughter.
Afterward, according to reporters traveling with the president, the Bidens went to the adjoining cemetery. Neilia, Naomi and Beau Biden, the president’s older son who died of brain cancer in 2015, are all buried there.
Other members of the family who attended the service included Biden’s granddaughter, Maisy Biden, who was seen carrying a wreath. Hunter Biden was also in attendance.
Biden will announce this morning that former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III will serve as the US envoy to Northern Ireland.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that Biden should ask for an extension of Title 42, a public health authority that was invoked under former President Donald Trump and allows officials to expel migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border.
Texas lawmakers from both parties urged the Biden administration to provide more support in the days leading up to this week’s scheduled end of a Trump-era policy that had allowed for widespread expulsions of people seeking asylum.
White House adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms cited the disruptiveness caused by presidential travel as a reason why Biden hasn’t been to the southern border, a criticism levied by Republicans amid a crisis of a record number of migrants crossing into the U.S.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is warning that the city is expected to receive over 1,000 asylum-seekers each week, with Title 42 set to be lifted Wednesday.
Adams predicted that the policy’s expiration would lead to 1,000 additional migrants coming to New York each week.
“Our shelter system is full, and we are nearly out of money, staff and space,” Adams said. “This can’t continue.”
After more than five years of dramatic headlines about controversies, scandals and potential crimes surrounding former President Trump, the coming week will be among the most consequential.
Today, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Trump’s supporters will hold what is almost certainly its final public meeting before it is disbanded when Republicans take over the majority in the new year.
The committee will reportedly take up criminal referrals against Trump on at least three charges: the crime of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Trump has weighed in on the contentious battle confronting GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to be the chamber’s next speaker, calling on his supporters in Congress to halt their opposition tactics and stop “playing a very dangerous game.”
Retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey offered a pointed closing message for his fellow Republican colleagues, saying that Trump’s hold on the party is “waning.”
Trump has the respect of the newest generation of conservatives. But at the nation’s largest annual gathering of MAGA Millennials and Gen Z-ers, talk of the former president has centered on his legacy, rather than anticipation about his political future.
China reported its first COVID-related deaths in weeks amid rising doubts over whether the official count was capturing the full toll of a disease that is ripping through cities after the government relaxed strict anti-virus controls.
New bivalent COVID booster shots are more effective at reducing risk of hospitalization than boosters of the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in two new studies Friday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said Americans seem “confused” about whether they need an updated COVID-19 vaccine booster, urging people to get another shot if it’s been six months since their last one.
Americans should still gather to celebrate the holidays, despite a rise in respiratory illness and low rates of uptake for the latest Covid-19 vaccine, Dr. Jha said, but they’ll be safer if they get their updated boosters first.
The government plans to stop footing the bill for Paxlovid within months, and millions of people who are at the highest risk of severe illness and are least able to afford the drug — the uninsured and seniors — may have to pay the full price.
An unvaccinated upstate judge who is prohibited from deciding cases in person because she’s not vaccinated is suing the court system, citing ‘arbitrary’ COVID-19 mandate.
New Yorkers are contending with a bewildering and miserable mix of symptoms as Covid, flu, R.S.V. and various mystery illnesses circulate.
The FDA needs to take action as New York City and Long Island suffer from dangerous “spot shortages” of medicine for children due to the triple threat of COVID, RSV and the flu, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
A former Long Island high school teacher accused of injecting a teen with a COVID-19 vaccine at her home without his parents’ knowledge pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to community service and probation, avoiding a felony charge.
The 22-member Climate Action Council will vote today on its highly anticipated road map for how New York will move to a carbon free economy in the coming years, which if successful will be a legacy lesson for the nation in combating climate change.
The plan will likely be approved, given that 12 of the 22-member Council are state agency or authority chiefs who serve directly or indirectly at the pleasure of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Lawmakers and environmental advocates urged Hochul to include a statewide fossil fuel ban on all new construction in her upcoming budget, nearly a year after she announced the electrification of new buildings as a priority for her administration.
The union representing thousands of state troopers recently issued a directive instructing its members to “not cooperate” with a special unit in the AG’s office that was empowered last year to investigate fatal encounters in New York involving police officers.
Over the past six months, courts across the state have approved more than 2,000 temporary orders of protection, red flags that are intended to prevent a person from possessing or purchasing a firearm.
New York is prohibiting political parties from using the words “independence” or “independent” in their names in an effort to avoid voter confusion.
The state’s acquisition of 1,300 acres of forest and grassland in the Taconic Mountains is being heralded as a boost to recreation and a step toward preserving critical open space.
The Adirondack Park Agency unanimously approved plans for an RV campground on Great Sacandaga Lake in the town of Mayfield last week, though it brought up jurisdictional questions.
Hochul signed a bill Friday that would make New York becomes the 10th state to prohibit the sale of cosmetics tested on animals.
New York City’s ban on the sale of foie gras, the fattened livers of ducks and geese prized as an ingredient in many French dishes, may not go into effect if a new ruling by New York’s Department of Agriculture and Markets goes unchallenged by the city.
Hochul vetoed the so-called ‘Stop the Chop’ bill that would have limited helicopter flights to and from the Hudson River Park heliport.
Hochul vetoed a bill late last week that would have capped late fees for unpaid tolls at New York City area bridges and tunnels, arguing it would essentially reward scofflaws for bad behavior.
A bipartisan City Council coalition is calling on Hochul to reopen many of the state’s shuttered psychiatric facilities to help Adams move forward with his sweeping mental health plan.
Hochul and Adams unveiled an ambitious plan last week for how to supercharge New York City’s economy — but members of the panel that produced the blueprint are skeptical of the viability of portions of it.
If Adams’s proposed library cuts go through, huge numbers of New Yorkers will suffer immensely.
Adams lit the first candle on the world’s tallest menorah last night, the first night of Hanukkah, together with Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan.
New York’s first legal cannabis shops are gearing up for opening, but community boards that are supposed to have input are getting mixed messages.
So far, more than 30 percent of students in the NYC district of roughly 900,000 children have been chronically absent this school year, while early figures show 121,000 fewer kids in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled this fall than before the pandemic.
Scofflaws are tampering with tags, costing New York agencies more than $100 million a year in missed payments and fines. A group of citizen enforcers is coming to the city’s rescue.
Five of New York City’s billionaires are rolling the dice on gambling in the Big Apple. Each is vying for what is predicted to be a single license to open a legal casino.
Fatal stabbings and slashings are up an alarming 37% in the Big Apple this year.
New York City police officers can no longer detain people solely to determine if there is a warrant for their arrest, if they don’t believe a crime has happened or is imminent, under a settlement filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday.
The ex-staffer accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James’ former chief of staff of forcibly sticking his tongue down her throat also claims he blocked her from working on James’ recent re-election campaign, according to her bombshell lawsuit.
A state Department of Health employee mocked Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin on Twitter in response to news that the politician was being treated for prostate cancer — then doubled down by seeming to laugh off criticism of her remarks.
The Point Kitchen & Cocktails will close following service on New Year’s Eve after a 12-year run, and its perennially busy next-door sibling Cafe Madison will move into the space, more than doubling its seating capacity.
Will Brown won’t return for a second season as the head coach and general manager of the Albany Patroons of The Basketball League.
The votes are in for Saratoga Springs’ first participatory budget initiative – a survey of what residents want the city spend its money on – with nine projects making the cut, including an urban forest, outdoor skating in Congress Park and a community garden.
Argentina won their third World Cup in an extraordinary final as they beat France 4-2 on penalties after Lionel Messi scored twice in a 3-3 draw and Kylian Mbappe grabbed a hat-trick to bring the holders back from 2-0 and 3-2 down.
Messi, wearing a black Qatari robe over his blue-and-white Argentina shirt, kissed the World Cup, shuffled toward his teammates and hoisted the golden trophy high in the air.
