Good Monday morning, and welcome to a brand new month!
On the Jewish calendar, we have moved from a holiday that focuses on not eating (Yom Kippur) to one that is all about eating – albeit out of doors: Sukkot, which began on sundown this past Friday and lasts through sundown next Friday, Oct. 6.
As an aside, before we get into the whys and wherefores of the Lulav, the Etrog, and the Sukkah, it’s worth noting that there are actually six fast days in Judaism, Yom Kippur being the most well known of the group, and the second Tisha b’Av.
Otherwise, we are a people very much focused on food. And, though I’m not the most observant Jew on the plant, I am here for that part of observance.
As a kid, I really enjoyed Sukkot. It was one of my favorite Jewish holidays – after Chanukkah, because, well, gifts; and Purim, because I was a big fan of dressing up. Two Halloweens (sorta, kinda) instead of one! Who can argue with that?
We used to gather with a group of New Paltz Jewish families who all had kids about the same age – a few a bit older, a few a bit younger, some – members of my pre-school playgroup – born the same year as I was – and build a Sukkah in someone’s yard.
The kids would make paper chains and cut out pictures of fruits and veggies, while the adults banged together a simple timber hut and covered the top with branches. Then we would all sit down inside the hut and eat a potluck meal. It was glorious.
“Sukkah” in Hebrew translates into “booth”, and it is supposed to commemorate the time that the Jews were wandering in the desert after escaping enslavement in Egypt.
The temporary nature of the sukkah represents the transient and fragile nature of life and our dependence on G-d. Though that sounds a little on the deep and dark side, Sukkot is a very joyful holiday that also celebrates the fall harvest.
If you don’t have a yard to build a sukkah in, you can erect one on your balcony, or even in a vacant lot (assuming the owner doesn’t mind). It’s not unheard of to erect a sukkah in public spaces for everyone to enjoy. It’s traditional to eat all one’s meals in the sukkah throughout the week-long holiday, and even sleep there, though the nights tend to be a little on the chilly side.
There’s another Sukkot tradition that some non-Jews have a hard time getting their heads around. Why do we wave a bunch of branches and a fruit that looks sort of like a lemon, about which we get VERY upright when it comes to keeping a little bump called the “pitam” in tact?
The branches actually several species – a palm branch, along with myrtle and willow – called a “lulav”, which is held in the right hand and waved along with the citron fruit known as an “etrog” (held in the left hand), while praying.
If the etrog comes with an intact pitam but then it breaks off or is otherwise damaged, the fruit is no longer considered viable for the mitzvah of waving. If the etrog has no pitam to begin with, you don’t have to worry about this. Why all the rules? Well, Judaism.
I have a very big yard now, but until just this minute I didn’t really consider the possibility of building a Sukkah. I’m still kind of shopping for a permanent replacement Jewish community for the one I left behind in New Paltz, and it kind of feels weird to build a Sukkah all by myself. Maybe next year.
It’s going to be a fabulous week for eating outside. As the days progress, we’ll even flirt with 80 degrees again, if the forecast holds. But don’t get too used to it. This is just the calm before the storm, so to speak. Today will be lovely, with sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s.
In the headlines…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, elevating the head of a fundraising juggernaut that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights.
Butler will become the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history, as well as the first openly LGBT senator from California. Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, died last week at 90.
Newsom is moving swiftly to name the next senator, two days after Feinstein’s death and just as a perilously split Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown. Senate Democrats are in need of every vote in the closely divided chamber.
Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown Saturday as the House, in a stunning turnabout, approved a stopgap plan to keep the federal government open until mid-November. After Senate passage, President Biden signed the bill into law.
Biden has warned that conservative rebels “will be back again” to try thwart the next funding deal after Congress voted to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government funded, avoiding a shutdown with just hours until the deadline.
Biden is predicting that the 2024 presidential election could make or break the MAGA movement.
The eleventh-hour bill that averted a federal government shutdown included no new funding for Ukraine, but Biden was quick to assure the Kyiv government that U.S. support remains steadfast.
“I can reassure [Ukraine] we’ll get there, that we’re going to get it done,” Biden said on restoring funding for the war. “I want to assure our American allies… that you can count on our support, we will not walk away.”
“We have time, not much time, and there’s an overwhelming sense of urgency,” he added, noting that the funding bill lasts only until mid-November. Biden urged Congress to negotiate an aid package as soon as possible.
Congress may have finally managed to squeeze out a deal to fund the government for 45 days, but the eleventh-hour resolution is already causing trouble for Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida indicated that he will call for a motion to vacate — a vote to toss McCarthy from leadership for passing a continuing resolution that Gaetz says violates the terms of McCarthy’s speakership deal.
“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week,” Gaetz said. “I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that will be trustworthy.”
McCarthy said yesterday that he expected to survive a threat to his speakership after a hardline critic within his party called for his ouster following the passage of a stopgap government funding bill that drew more support from Democrats than Republicans.
Long peeved by Gaetz — who has targeted GOP leadership and undercut his party repeatedly — some Republicans are champing at the bit to expel the congressman if the House Ethics Committee investigating him finds wrongdoing.
A growing chorus of lawmakers and political observers are raising eyebrows at Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s claim that pulling a fire alarm in a House building was an innocent mistake — with some expressing anger over the fact he hasn’t been arrested.
Bowman, a Democrat, pulled the alarm ahead of a rushed vote on a stopgap funding measure. Two investigations have been opened in the incident by the Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee.
When the Supreme Court returns to the bench today, it will face a docket of unfinished business. The justices will revisit issues like gun rights, government power, race and free speech even as they are shadowed by intense scrutiny of their conduct off the bench.
Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis criticized former President Donald Trump for not showing up to the second GOP primary debate.
Trump is expected to show up in court this morning as trial is slated to kick off in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud case against the former president and his company, according to law enforcement sources.
Trump was photographed walking into Trump Tower — a property he could be forced to surrender depending on the trial’s outcome — in Midtown at around 8 p.m. yesterday after campaigning for his 2024 presidential bid in Iowa earlier in the day.
“With all due respect to Donald Trump, we’re not going to beat the Democrats by adopting Joe Biden’s basement strategy,” the Republican Florida governor said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Heavy rainfall pounded New York City and the surrounding region on Friday, bringing flash floods, shutting down entire subway lines, turning major roadways into lakes and sending children to the upper floors of flooding schoolhouses.
Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency, urging New Yorkers to stay home and singling out those who live in basements to brace for the worst.
Mayor Eric Adams did not publicly discuss the coming storm until nearly 24 hours after weather officials first warned of potential flash flooding in New York. He is once again under scrutiny for being slow to respond.
The mayor who boasts about how “if you’re going to hang out with the boys at night, you have to get up with the men in the morning” was out late again Thursday night at a belated birthday party and fundraiser for himself.
He didn’t get around to talking to New Yorkers about the storm that racked the city Friday morning until declaring a state of emergency a little before noon – a couple of hours after Hochul had done so and long after the worst of the rain.
Unlike the governor, Adams did not appear in any media before the storm to warn New Yorkers of what was to come.
The rain — five-plus inches in Central Park and significantly more in parts of Brooklyn — all but shut down stretches of highway, snarled subway service throughout the city, flooded part of LaGuardia airport, and generally made life miserable.
One day after New York City was drenched by a massive storm, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams criticized Adams for his low profile during the raging rainfall and widespread flooding.
City Councilwoman Gale Brewer said she spent three hours waiting for a stationary 2 train to leave an uptown station before giving up Friday, becoming one of countless New Yorkers whose rain-soaked commutes went horribly haywire.
New Yorkers could wake up to hazy skies this morning as smoke from ongoing Canadian wildfires is expected to reach the Big Apple by sunrise.
Current forecasts indicate the Air Quality Index will be about 55, which means “there may be some risk to people who are unusually sensitive to air pollution,” the city said in a press release.
Police are asking the public for assistance in locating a 9-year-old girl who was abducted from a campground near Moreau Lake State Park in Gansevoort Saturday evening.
New York State Police issued an Amber Alert for Charlotte E. Sena yesterday morning, saying that she was was last seen at 6:15 p.m. on Saturday, wearing an orange tie-dye Pokémon shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and a grey bike helmet.
“On a picture-perfect fall day here…Charlotte Sena’s family and friends gathered for a weekend of friendship and food and enjoying one of the last few days of good weather.” Hochul said. “But instead, the day turned into every parent’s nightmare.”
An investigation that found that the acting State Police superintendent mistreated employees leaves Hochul once again in search of a new leader.
The migrant crisis in New York is so bad that even Hochul is ramping up her attacks on US border policies, demanding “a limit on who can come across’’ and more agents to nab illegals.
“People coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum, and the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York, and that is a real problem for New York City,” Hochul added.
Democratic former President Bill Clinton acknowledged that New York City’s progressive “Right to Shelter law” needs to be amended given the migrant crisis.
A top advisor to Adams yesterday called for the federal government to “close the borders” in order to prevent more migrants from coming to New York City.
The Brooklyn Democratic Party is embroiled in a civil war after its leader suggested whiter neighborhoods in the borough are not shouldering their fair share of migrant shelters.
The Business Council of New York State recently announced a campaign for changes in clean energy goals to address what is says are potential “significant unintended consequences” of current climate policies.
A coalition of nearly 70 New York state legislators have asked Hochul to sign legislation meant to rescue cannabis growers.
The Hochul administration is nowhere close to implementing a statewide system to test whether motorists are driving stoned – more than two-and-a-half years after New York legalized recreational pot use.
Tom Wrobleski: “We’ve gotten to the point in New York that legal weed grown by farmers is rotting away in storage because the state has so badly botched its rollout of legal marijuana.”
The fight for control of Congress will face a crucial early battle in November when the state Court of Appeals will hear arguments on whether New York’s congressional boundaries should be redrawn.
Longtime LGBTQ rights activist Allen Roskoff is launching a campaign to recruit a progressive Democrat to run against Adams in 2025 — marking the first official left-wing effort aimed at ousting the incumbent, who already holds a big fund-raising edge.
Three donations to Adams’ 2021 campaign reviewed by the Daily News have drawn scrutiny from law enforcement and election watchdogs after the contributions touched off alarm bells.
Republican Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente is blocking Adams’ bid to shunt Big Apple homeless residents north, calling the move yet another flagrant attempt to shift the migrant crisis elsewhere.
A former bodega clerk who was infamously charged with murder after fatally stabbing an attacker in his store last year in what he claimed was self-defense is suing Manhattan DA Alvin and the New York City Police Department for racial discrimination.
It’s fall. And for millions of New Yorkers, that means it’s heat season — an eight-month span where the city requires landlords to keep their apartments warm.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned that parts of Long Island’s prized beaches and nature reserves have been literally washing away and the Biden Administration has done nothing to replenish the beaches and stem the erosion.
Saratoga County will partner with a tourism agency to promote its cultural, historical and natural attractions, with the aim of benefiting both tourists and the local community.
The parent-teacher organization at Cohoes Middle School has taken an alternative approach to raising funds — and they brought in more money in two days than they raised in an entire month last year.
The city may invest $2.5 million in state funds to convert a former bank and jewelry store at 75 Remsen St. into the new home for the Cohoes Public Library, officials said.
The Capital Region’s competition for large and lucrative economic development and manufacturing projects isn’t who you think it is, according to a new study by Newmark, a New York City real estate consulting firm.
Former President Jimmy Carter yesterday put off his practice of quietly watching church services online to instead celebrate his 99th birthday with his wife, Rosalynn, and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Plains.
