Good morning, it’s finally Friday.
We are on the cusp of another week in which two religious observances will collide.
Palm Sunday will be observed this weekend, marking the start of Holy Week, which will culminate with the celebration of Easter next Sunday, April 5. Meanwhile, the Jewish holiday of Passover will start next Wednesday, April 1, and end on Thursday, April 9.
This juxtaposition is not unusual. In fact, since the turn of the century, Easter has overlapped with Passover in every year but three: 2005, 2008 and 2016. The two holidays share a connection to the spring lunar cycles, but calculations as to what date, exactly, they fall on, are different.
True to form for my people, there is a debate as to why observance of Passover starts on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nissan and not the 14th, as the Torah seems to require. According to several online sources I perused, the holiday that falls on the 14th is actually Pesach, while what starts on the 15th is the week-long Holiday of Matzot. If you want to go deep on that, click here.
We’ll talk more about Passover next week as its start date draws closer. For now, however, let us focus on Holy Week, which will kick off this weekend with the observance of Palm Sunday.
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus’ triumphant arrival in Jerusalem on the back of a donkey – a moment that fulfilled a prophecy and also marked the start of his last week on Earth before his crucifixion and resurrection. As he rode into Jerusalem, Jesus’ supporters laid palm branches in his path to honor him as a king. (The palm was an ancient symbol of celebration and victory).
It is traditional to attend mass on Palm Sunday, during which there might be a procession into the church with participants holding blessed palm fronds aloft. A reading of the Passion of Christ typically plays a central role in the service, after which palms are distributed to the faithful to be fashioned into small crosses and other ornaments.
There are slightly different traditions for this day in other parts of the world.
Palm trees are not native to Poland, for example, so you might be more likely to find artificial palm leaves festooned with ribbons or tissue paper flowers. In Norway, another country where palm trees are not likely to be found, people decorate their homes with painted eggs and birch branches. In Latvia, where the palm is similarly scares, people celebrate Pussy Willow Sunday.
A pretty middle-of-the-road weekend is on tap, starting with today, which will bring mostly sunny skies and high temperatures in the low 40s.
Tomorrow, Saturday, will be on the chilly side, comparatively speaking, with highs only reaching into the mid-30s, with partly cloudy skies and the chance of a few stray snow flurries (boo, hiss). Sunday will be calmer and warmer, with mostly cloudy skies and highs in the low 50s.
In the headlines…
The Senate voted early this morning to fund the DHS except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.
The measure, which passed the Senate by a voice vote at around 2:20 a.m., does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol – a demand by the Democrats in order to move forward.
The Senate approved the funding package by a voice vote and now has a scheduled two-week recess. The House could vote today, before the shutdown would break the record Saturday night for the longest funding lapse of any federal agency in U.S. history.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the outcome “unfortunate”. “The Dems wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up getting no reforms but, you know, we’re going to have to fight some of those battles another day,” he said.
Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, the Treasury Department said. This is an unprecedented change and one that the department said was being made in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are on a path toward unprecedented economic growth, lasting dollar dominance and fiscal strength and stability,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women’s events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy that aligns with Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The International Olympic Committee not only barred transgender athletes from competing in the women’s category of the Olympics, but also said that all participants in those events must undergo genetic testing.
The DOJ has agreed to pay Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, $1.25 million to settle claims that he was wrongfully prosecuted for making false statements to federal agents investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences announced that the annual Academy Awards ceremony will move to L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles in 2029.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to define her Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, to voters before he gets a chance to do so.
While many Democratic leaders have adopted a confrontational approach to dealing with the president, Hochul has opted for cooperation when possible. The relationship has given her unusual access to the White House to make her case for New York.
Discussions over boosting taxes for wealthy New Yorkers and corporations are being put on the back burner in Albany as Hochul presses to weaken the state’s 2019 climate law.
Hochul’s proposal to change the state’s emissions accounting methods struck a nerve with legislators that could provide room for compromise to keep it the same.
Hochul is drawing together an unlikely coalition in her bid to streamline the environmental review process most multi-unit housing projects have to go through, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Real Estate Board of New York and environmentalists.
Assemblywoman Deborah Glick has introduced a bill that would force the Empire State Building and nearly all of New York City to go dark after 11 p.m. — but detractors say the plan would let criminals run wild under the cloak of night.
Soaring profits on Wall Street have led to record bonuses, stuffing public coffers with additional tax revenue as New York state and city develop their latest budgets.
The city was counting on a 15 percent rise in bonuses to produce tax revenues to fill its budget gap. The actual increase was 9 percent, the state comptroller said.
But state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said the $49.2 billion cash-bonus pool his office tallied shouldn’t be a license to expand government spending, and could just be a one-off.
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board kicked off the process of deciding whether to enact Mayor Mamdani’s campaign promise of freezing rents on stabilized units in its first meeting of the year yesterday, as it considered data that could support a rent freeze.
Nearly 10% of rent-stabilized properties in New York City are run down, it was revealed yesterday, as landlords claimed that Mamdani’s promised rent freeze will only make it harder to get those units up to snuff.
Mamdani spoke at a star-studded fundraiser for congressional candidate and ally Brad Lander this week at a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.
Some climate activists want the mayor to take a stronger stance on the governor’s potential amendment of the CLCPA, so far he has not done so. He previously said the state’s climate law “is not a suggestion. It is a mandate.”
The City Council passed a bill aimed at limiting the scope of disruptive protests outside of synagogues and other houses of worship that has sparked concern over free speech issues that critics say is aimed at pro-Palestinian protesters.
Trump said he’d take a plan to rebuild Penn Station and relocate Madison Square Garden seriously if the arena’s influential owner is willing to play ball, according to sources familiar with the talks.
A Manhattan judge said he wouldn’t throw out narco-terrorism charges against ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, but sounded sympathetic to arguments about U.S. sanctions interfering with their defense.
A Harlem mom who lost two sons to shootings spoke passionately about tackling gun violence as the NYPD announced seizing more than 1,000 firearms from city streets so far this year.
The family of a man who died in custody this week after jail officials said he had a medical episode on Rikers Island says he had no urgent health issues when he arrived at the troubled jail complex.
After 99 years as an anchor in Manhattan’s theater district, Sardi’s, the restaurant and watering hole famed for its walls of caricatures of celebrities past and present, is going dark for an extended intermission.
A boy, the son of a New York police officer, may have been playing with a gun when it accidentally went off, killing high school athlete Ka’Mardre Coleman, 16, according to prosecutors and the boy’s lawyer.
The Hyde Park Drive-in Theatre is coming back to life after the National Park Service signed a lease with an entity that plans to reopen the longtime Dutchess County landmark.
A creek in a Staten Island park turned green after the city DEP performed a so-called “flush test,” putting dye in the park’s toilets to see if the waste from users of the restroom was sloshing into the creek — as long had been suspected.
South Glens Falls firefighters saved a cat after Saratoga County Water Authority employees discovered it floating atop a sheet of ice in a manmade reservoir on its property.
Amid public urging to raise the rainbow Pride flag on town property this June, the Moreau Town Board has delayed a decision about the issue. But it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
The mayor of an Otsego County village was arrested for the second time in less than a year and accused of repeatedly raping a child in Clifton Park more than a decade ago.
The Schoharie County Board of Supervisors has offered the job of Democratic commissioner of the Board of Elections to Terry Burton, after rejecting four previous nominees for the job that sparked a legal challenge of the process.
An uncertified teacher’s assistant has been running a special education classroom at the Langan School in Albany for the majority of the past two years, according to records from the Center for Disability Services.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
