Good FRIDAY morning, and Happy New Year.
Some might fine that previous sentence confusing. Isn’t it a little early for such felicitations?
Not if you’re Jewish.
Sundown tonight on the Jewish calendar marks the start of the year 5784 and Rosh Hashanah, which is the first of the High Holidays – Yamim Noraim (“Days of Awe”) – celebrated 10 days before Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.
Rosh Hashanah is Hebrew for “the head of the year.” It’s a two-day celebration observed on the first two days of Tishrei, the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar. It typically occurs in the fall, but since the Jewish and secular calendars don’t match up, the date moves around annually.
Rosh Hashanah is filled with traditions like going to synagogue, listening to the shofar (a sort of rudimentary trumpet made from a hollowed-out ram’s horn), eating a round challah (representing the wheel of the seasons and continuity) and apples and honey (signifying a “sweet” new year).
It also includes one of my favorite Jewish rituals – Tashlikh or Tashlich, Hebrew for “cast off”, which involves symbolically casting off ones sins in the form of breadcrumbs thrown into a natural body of flowing water like a stream, river, or the ocean.
(Of course, it wouldn’t be Judaism if there wasn’t some sort of debate over this practice, which in this case involves the feeding of fish…click here if you want to go down this Tamuldic rabbit hole).
Rosh Hashanah is a festive and feel-good holiday, but it also kind of gets you ready for Yom Kippur, which is a somber and reflective holiday during which Jews fast and atone for their sins.
On Rosh Hashanah, you look back on the past year and think about what you could have done better, while also looking ahead in anticipation of the year to come.
Jewish tradition holds that G-d has books of life, and writes down in them lists of who will live and who will die in the coming year, and if we live, what kind of year we will have (good or bad).
The books are written on Rosh Hashanah, but through “teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah,” – repentance, prayer, good deeds – performed during the 10 Days of Awe, we have a chance to alter what is written before the book is “sealed” for the next 365 at the close of Yom Kippur.
Pretty heavy stuff. Then again, I’m having a hard time coming up with an organized religion that doesn’t have similar elements – at least in the realm of “right vs. wrong action”. I guess anything from the outside looking in might seem sort of extreme.
It will be partly to mostly cloudy today with temperatures in the low 70s. The weekend is looking to be much the same, with lots of clouds and temperatures never getting out of the mid-to-high 70s. At least it will be dry.
In the headlines…
The United Auto Workers went on strike at three plants across the Big Three car manufacturers at midnight today, the union’s first offensive after its existing contracts expired without a new deal.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said the union would strike all the Big Three automakers – GM, Ford and Stellantis – at the same time as of midnight if the companies do not reach tentative labor deals with the auto workers.
While the limited nature of the walkout will spare the economy a heavy hit for the time being, it will put more pressure on President Biden to work with both sides to avert a full-blown walkout by nearly 150,000 union members across several other states.
GM said that before time ran out, it had made “historic wage increases and manufacturing commitments” and offered an unprecedented economic package in an effort to reach a deal with the union.
Biden plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week around the United Nations General Assembly meetings, according to multiple officials familiar with the plans.
Zelenskiy’s trip comes as Congress is debating President Joe Biden’s request to provide as much as $24bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.
Biden yesterday issued a blistering rebuke of House Republicans’ budget proposals ahead of an upcoming fight over funding the government, warning “MAGAnomics” proposals are “more extreme than anything America has ever seen before.”
The president argued that he has done a better job of managing the economy than former President Donald Trump did and accused his predecessor’s congressional allies of undercutting working-class Americans.
The House speaker abandoned efforts to move forward on a normally bipartisan military spending bill as far-right Republicans balked at the funding level, after pleading with his party to avert a shutdown.
The president trumpeting Medicare’s new powers to negotiate directly with drugmakers on the cost of prescription medications — but a new poll shows any immediate political boost that Biden gets for enacting the overwhelmingly popular policy may be limited.
Federal prosecutors have indicted Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, on gun charges, court documents show. Biden was indicted yesterday in Delaware federal court on three counts tied to the possession of a gun while using narcotics.
The indictment comes weeks after the collapse of a plea deal that would have averted a criminal trial and distracting headlines for President Joe Biden.
The Georgia racketeering trials for Trump and 16 co-defendants won’t begin in October, a judge ruled yesterday.
An appellate judge has taken the remarkable step of hitting pause on the New York Attorney General’s upcoming bank fraud trial against Trump granting the former president’s request in a surprise hearing yesterday that was closed off to the public.
A state appeals court judge ordered a potential postponement of the non-jury trial, scheduled to start Oct. 2, after Trump’s lawyers filed a lawsuit accusing the trial judge, Arthur Engoron, of repeatedly abusing his authority.
Trump said that it is “very unlikely” he would pardon himself if he wins another term in 2024, adding in an exclusive interview with NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker that he believes he did nothing wrong.
Long Island Rep. George Santos’ former communications director is realizing she should have bailed earlier as she searches for a new job.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed three bills into law dealing with workers’ rights, her office announced.
The New York state Department of Health could save hundreds of millions of dollars if it had better oversight of enrollment in Medicaid and other public health plans, according to two audits by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office.
Poliovirus has not been detected in New York wastewater facilities since February, easing concerns about a potential resurgence of the disease.
Several parts of New York State’s concealed carry gun laws requiring more stringent background checks are now in effect.
The state Attorney General’s Office is asking the Village of Monroe, in Orange County, to hold off on adopting a law it says restricts the rights of Orthodox Jewish residents.
Rabbis from ultra-Orthodox private schools said they are planning to sue the state Education Department over regulations about what they teach, they decided at a meeting last weekend.
In one his few public appearances since resigning in disgrace, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo last night bashed the federal and state government’s response to New York City’s migrant crisis — and warned the issue is “going to hurt” Democrats politically.
Hundreds of asylum seekers flock to a Lower Manhattan federal building in the pre-dawn hours each day in a desperate bid to get benefits, services and keep court appointments — as confusion continues to reign during the Big Apple migrant crisis.
The newest migrants in New York need money but are prohibited from working. A secondary market of fake app logins and weekly bike rentals has emerged.
The influx of migrants from the southern border has strained city resources, put pressure on local leaders, and scrambled the political playing field. Now, angry protests over the crisis and the city’s response to it appear to be reaching a fever pitch.
New York City officials blindsided a sleepy Staten Island neighborhood by opening a 300-person migrant shelter at the site of a former Catholic school – where the scent of raw sewage now wafts into the home next door, lawyers charged at a court hearing.
The scope of the work DocGo is contractually required to provide remains unclear. Questions have also mounted about the assertions by the company and its top official, CEO Anthony Capone.
Mayor Eric Adams has recently found himself in political hot water, but there are no signs that his fellow Democrats have any plans to pull him out.
A trove of surveillance, wiretaps and records released by Manhattan prosecutors painted an unflattering picture of the Adams’ administration, showing how intertwined it was in the bribery schemes alleged of former city buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich.
A bipartisan legislative push is afoot on Capitol Hill to prohibit all U.S. employers from forcing their retired workers into Medicare Advantage coverage — a proposal that could spell trouble for Adams.
The City Council voted unanimously to grant Madison Square Garden a five-year special operating permit — the shortest extension in the arena’s history — setting the stage for years of more back-and-forth negotiations around fixing Penn Station.
New York City lawmakers introduced a plan to force delivery apps to cover the costs of safe, certified e-bikes or other electric transport devices for their workers — the latest push by officials to curb the use of shoddy e-bikes that spark explosive fires.
Councilman Shaun Abreu introduced a bill requiring sports venues to allow patrons to bring reusable beverage containers into events, which is aimed at reducing trash and saving fans money they would have otherwise spent on in-house beverages.
Chris Winkler is on trial, accused of taking too many fish from the seas off gentrified Montauk. His former partners have pleaded guilty, and stand to make millions from the sale of their small seafood-themed empire.
After more than two decades of imagining, planning, debating, fund-raising, losing hope and fund-raising some more, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened last night at the World Trade Center site.
A New York appeals court has sided with a “Dateline NBC” reporter who fought a subpoena that required her to testify at the upcoming trial of a Chenango County man accused of killing his wife in 2012.
Despite a new alert system in place, the Glenridge Road bridge was struck again Wednesday. A low-slung bridge nearby was struck Thursday, police said.
Five Troy firefighters needed hospital care after an accident during an exercise yesterday morning at the Colonie Fire Training Tower.
GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield was in Singapore earlier this week to celebrate completion of the company’s newest computer chip manufacturing site.
