Good morning, it’s Monday.
I’m not really sure how to approach this post, given the current state of the world. In just a few days, Jews around the globe will begin observing the holiest day of their religious year – Yom Kippur, which starts at sundown this Friday and continues through sundown the following day, Saturday, Oct. 12.
During this time, Jews will be fasting – abstaining from all food, water, and forms of pleasure – to focus on prayer and asking G-d for forgiveness for their transgressions in hopes that he will seal them in the Book of Life for the coming year.
This will occur on the heels of today’s one-year anniversary of the deadliest attack on Israel since the Holocaust, which is falling smack in the middle of the High Holy Days, adding further meaning and weight to what is already a very heavy stretch of time.
A year later, and not all the hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks have been freed – if they are even still alive. A year later, and the violence not only continues, but has escalated exponentially. Fighting and attacks have broadened to include Iran and Lebanon and the Middle East is teetering on the edge of an all-out regional war – a tipping point some say has already occurred.
In a not at all surprising development, the the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint public announcement last Friday, warning that the anniversary would serve as a motivator for acts of violence by extremists.
The security officials did not cite any intelligence related to specific threats, but warned individuals who might be participating in vigils or demonstrations, or simply praying at their respective houses of worship (in this case mosques, synagogues, Islamic centers etc.) be “aware of your surroundings at all times and report suspicious activities to the authorities.”
Religious institutions have responded by bolstering security, which is a sad testament to the grim reality of this moment in history, but not at all out of the ordinary.
There has been a police detail – both plainclothes and a marked car – outside my synagogue for years now. But this year does feel different – quite frankly, scarier, in my opinion – as members of Jewish, Muslim and Arab American communities have all experienced increased threats since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
And, according to new data released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), antisemitic incidents (defined here are harassment, vandalism, and physical attacks) in the U.S. have soared to an all-time high following the Oct. 7 attacks. The ADL found that more than 10,000 incidents occurred from this date last year through Sept. 24, which is about three times higher than the same time period last year.
Hate crimes against Jews that are reported (many hate crimes go unreported, sadly) have contributed to an overall increase in this category of crime, even as violent crime has dropped, according to the FBI.
On Friday, Governor Kathy Hochul said that multiple bomb threats had been received by synagogues across the state, but were deemed not credible following an “extensive” investigation.
I’m not sure about you, but I find it difficult to concentrate wholly on spiritual matters while also remaining vigilant about potential attacks, being on alert for any suspicious activity and noting where the exits are. Sadly, there is definitely cause for concern, as religious institutions are often the target of hatred and violence.
Again, leaving aside the increasingly complicated politics of the Middle East, I just feel incredibly sad for everyone who has been touched by this tragic turn of events, which is to say pretty much all of us.
Perhaps I will just leave it here, and say that today I am holding in my heart everyone who lost their lives on Oct. 7, was hurt or killed since that horrific day, and/or is mourning or missing someone.
May their memories be a blessing.
It is shaping up to me an appropriately gloomy day from a weather perspective. There will be showers in the morning, followed up with clouds in the afternoon. Temperatures will be in the mid-to-high 60s.
In the headlines…
Israel commemorated the first anniversary of the deadliest day in its history, the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 others abducted.
As dawn broke, hundreds of family members and friends gathered at the site of the Nova music festival in southern Israel to honor those killed that day, hours after thousands attended a vigil in Tel Aviv.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog was among those holding commemorations this morning at the Nova festival site, where he described the attacks as a “scar on the face of the Earth” and called for countries to support Israel.
A small group of the families of Israelis held hostage in Gaza and their supporters gathered just a few hundred meters from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in downtown Jerusalem and sounded a siren for two minutes.
A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose over 200% following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel as compared to the same period the year before.
It’s the highest number of antisemitic hate crimes, insults, bullying and vandalism ever recorded in any single-year period since ADL started tracking in 1979.
Exactly one month before Election Day, former president Donald Trump returned to the same location in Butler, PA, where an assassination attempt on his life occurred in July, aiming to regain momentum in a highly competitive presidential race.
While in Butler, Trump commended his own performance in the face of adversity and brought out one of his biggest backers, the billionaire Elon Musk, who jumped up and down on the stage.
Trump was in Wisconsin for a rally yesterday – a day after he tried to recapture some of the momentum he had before President Joe Biden dropped out by returning to the place where he survived an assassination attempt in July.
The former president said he needs a “mandate” from the American electorate this year as Election Day is just less than a month away.
With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.
Vice President Kamala Harris has a media blitz lined up for the week ahead, sitting for interviews in the coming days with radio host Howard Stern, late night host Stephen Colbert of “The Late Show,” and the hosts of “The View.”
Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, will have the spotlight to themselves on a prime-time “60 Minutes” election special after Trump declined the network’s invitation.
Harris was pressed on the U.S.’s support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in an upcoming interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes.”
Walz fielded tough questions on abortion, immigration, the economy and his own past misstatements in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” – his first appearance on a Sunday news program since becoming Harris’s running mate.
In a surprise move, the International Association of Fire Fighters said last week that it will not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race.
The union representing 350,000 professional firefighters and emergency medical workers in a social media post said its executive board voted by a margin of 1.2% not to endorse either Harris or Trump.
Milton strengthened from a tropical storm into a hurricane yesterday, increasing the threat to Florida’s west coast, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
The NHC also gave a warning about “5 to 8 inches” of rainfall “with localized totals up to 12 inches … expected across portions of the Florida Peninsula and the Keys through Wednesday night” in an advisory.
In North Carolina and other states, a barrage of conspiracy theories and false claims over efforts to bring relief after Hurricane Helene is alarming and disheartening officials and workers.
With post-Helene recovery efforts still underway, local officials and activists gathered to urge Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a bill that supporters argue would relieve some disaster-related stress for local governments.
Hochul announced Friday that $52.1 million will be used for purchasing accessible buses, paratransit, and other transportation alternatives. This funding is to support older citizens and people with disabilities.
More voters have dropped party labels and left New York City for upstate locales, shaking up long-established patterns in a traditional left-leaning state in ways that could cause ripples in the Nov. 5 election.
Hochul on Friday vetoed a bill that would have sweetened pensions for more than a thousand active specialized police officers across the state — just days after their union plastered billboards across New York attacking her record on crime.
The veto marked the fourth consecutive year Hochul has rejected the bill, which would allow union members to retire with an annual pension worth half their salary after 20 years on the job, rather than the current 25 years.
Some supporters of a ballot proposal in New York this year say it would codify abortion laws in the state constitution, while many opponents claim it would allow children to undergo surgery without the knowledge of their parents. What does Prop. 1 really do?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last week that New York City Mayor Eric Adams should not resign but needed to “articulate to New Yorkers in a compelling way a plan and a path forward.”
“My view is that Mayor Adams, like every other New Yorker and every other American, is entitled to the presumption of innocence and entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers who will ultimately determine his fate within the legal system,” Jeffries said.
Most New York City residents think Adams broke the law, is doing a bad job as mayor and should resign, according to a poll released Friday, the first since he was indicted last week on bribery and corruption charges.
The Marist poll found that 69 percent of adults living in New York City, and 71 percent of Democrats, thought the mayor should resign. Only 30 percent of respondents said Adams should serve out the rest of his term.
First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, who had her phones seized by federal investigators in September, is expected to resign, according to a source familiar with the plan. It is not yet known when she will resign.
Adams received a warm reception at events around the city Saturday — even while deflecting questions about a sweeping federal corruption probe and the upheaval it has sparked in his administration.
Adams’ indictment on charges he sold his office for favors, including silence about the Armenian genocide, is not the first time Turkish interests have been accused of going to great lengths to shape New Yorkers’ views on that blood-drenched chapter.
New York’s business community threw its support behind Adams, and continued backing him even as his legal problems began to threaten the governance of the city.
David Banks and Philip Banks III eclipsed their younger brother, Terence Banks, by rising to help run New York City. Then federal prosecutors seized the phones of all three men.
Republicans are trying to tie New York Democrats to Adams in the wake of his indictment on federal corruption charges, hoping the association will be a liability for those running in tight Empire State races that could determine control of the chamber next year.
Former Gov. David Paterson and his stepson were attacked on the Upper East Side by five teens the stepson had an earlier beef with, police said Saturday.
The NYPD early Saturday released surveillance images of the five suspects in the hopes someone would recognize them. Two teenaged boy, ages 12 and 13, were arrested following the assault.
The boys were charged with gang assault, according to the police. Two adults who were involved in the attack have not been caught, the police said. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack.
“The Governor is grateful to see the kids’ parents hold them to account and would also like to thank the NYPD for their strong work,” a spokesperson for Paterson said, adding that the former governor was glad to see the teens turn themselves in.
Paterson, 70, later said that he hopes the pint-sized punks who attacked him and his stepson on the Upper East Side have learned a lesson after getting charged.
The governor and his stepson, Anthony Chester Sliwa, were sent home from the hospital early Saturday morning after being taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center “as a precaution” on Friday evening, according to his spokesperson Sean Darcy.
Columbia University saw donations at its annual fundraiser drop nearly 29% after the spate of anti-Israel protests on campus earlier this year.
The annual “Giving Day” event brought in $21.4 million in 2024, compared to $30 million in 2022, the last time the event was held, according to campus newspaper Columbia Spectator.
Students from at least a dozen college campuses across the city are planning a walkout today as the city braces for a day of protests on the anniversary of the Israel-Gaza war.
A protective Maryland father concerned about Big Apple crime hired what he called a “security consultant” to keep an eye on his 19-year-old daughter — a freshman at NYU in Greenwich Village, where crime on or near campus has surged in the last three years.
Small city yeshivas and other religious schools would receive millions of taxpayer dollars each year to add security guards to combat rising hate threats, according to proposed new legislation in the City Council.
Within Our Lifetime, a group formed by New York students, has galvanized pro-Palestinian activists who are calling for the end of Israel — and facing accusations of antisemitism.
Protesters descended on Brooklyn Councilwoman Shahana Hanif’s office yesterday saying she is helping to fuel an anti-Israel tide of hate — as thousands separately rallied in Central Park in support of the hostages.
Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, of Queens, is demanding that the state Department of Health revoke the medical license of NYC’s disgraced ex-COVID czar Dr. Jay Varma.
The founder and co-owner of Yoga to the People, a wildly successful chain of studios that began in the East Village of Manhattan and later spread to nearly half a dozen states outside New York before closing in 2020, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion.
A marijuana company is applying for a license to open a dispensary in the vacant Greenpoint Savings Bank on Manhattan Avenue, a landmark building that’s been vacant since 2020.
New Yorkers may have less than two weeks left to visit the Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower Manhattan. City officials — who are pushing ahead with plans to build affordable housing for seniors on the site — issued the garden a two-week eviction notice.
The “Great Elephant Migration,” one of the largest outdoor art installations to hit the streets of New York, has placed 100 life-sized elephant sculptures in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.
A state Senate investigation into the permitting process for the controversial Competitive Power Ventures power plant in Orange County found issues with how the state regulates environmental projects.
Capital Region Jewish groups marked one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel in separate gatherings yesterday that advocated for different messages.
Though money will be tight for the City of Saratoga Springs in 2025, Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi said she won’t be raising taxes.
After three years and four incomplete applications, Barton Mines’ expansion proposal is deemed ready for action by the Adirondack Park Agency. The APA board is expected to vote on the proposed permit amendments at its November meeting.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Albany has dropped out of a long-running investigation that has focused on allegations of misconduct involving the spending, expenses and compensation of former leaders of the NYS Troopers PBA and an affiliated charity.
Jon Wilhelm — the chiropractor accused of sexually abusing a member of the U.S. women’s national bobsledding team — has publicly misrepresented the findings of an investigation into his alleged misconduct, the U.S. Center for SafeSport told the TU.
City of Troy police are responding to a video circulating on social media in which a sergeant appears to knock a 17-year-old under arrest onto the ground.
Seniors at Rensselaer High School are getting some of their first college acceptances with the “HVCC Guarantee.”
The city of Amsterdam has obtained a court order blocking the Sticker Mule CEO from illuminating its large Vote for Trump sign atop its building.
Christopher Ciccone, who devoted himself to his older sister Madonna, but who later, after feeling cast aside, wrote a memoir chronicling experiences that he described as “abuse,” died on Friday from cancer. He was 63.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
