Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
I recently went to visit my father in Charleston, S.C., a city I had never been to before. It was a difficult trip for a variety of reasons, but I did have the chance to reconnect with a cookie of my youth, the Rugelach.
You might be surprised to learn, as I was, that Charleston is home to one of the country’s oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities.
Back in colonial days, it was known as a beacon of religious freedom, which attracted a wide variety of settlers, and actually boasted the largest Jewish community in the entirety of the young nation until the early 1800s, when New York and New Orleans surged ahead in population growth.
Charleston is also the birthplace of Reform Judaism, which is a progressive/liberal movement that prioritizes the ethical aspects of the faith – most notably tikkun olam (repairing the world through charitable acts and volunteeris) – over strict religious observances, and is known for founding some of the first Jewish social service organizations in the U.S.
With all this in mind, it makes sense that I stumbled upon one of the best versions of Rugelach, a traditional Jewish cookie/pastry sort of situation, that I have enjoyed in some time. Yes, it was at Whole Foods, (don’t judge), which also, for the record, produces a very good chocolate Babka.
I tried two versions of Rugelach as a little pick-me-up treat – chocolate and apricot. Both were exceptional. You can also get cinnamon-nut, and while I wouldn’t necessarily turn it down, it wouldn’t be my first option.
Whole Foods uses a rich, cream cheese-based dough, which is a wholly American invention, as the traditional old world Rugelach was a yeasted dough affair, which made them kosher. (Remember, observant Jews don’t mix meat and dairy).
Rugelach, if you’ve never had the pleasure, is vaguely croissant-ish – a triangle of dough rolled around a variety of sweet fillings, glazed and baked. It has Eastern European roots and is decidedly Jewish in origin. The word “rugelach” is Yiddish, which translates more or less into “little twists” or “little corners” – though it is reminiscent of other pastries, including the Polish rogaliki, the Hungarian kifli, and the Viennese kipfel.
Jewish immigrants brought their Rugelach with them with they came to the U.S., but the recipes evolved based on ingredients that were readily available – most notably, with the addition of cream cheese into the dough, which made it richer, flakier, and easier to work with.
Today is National Rugelach Day, and I can’t think of a more deserving treat to celebrate.
Another mostly cloudy day is on tap, with temperatures topping out in the mid-to-high 60s.
In the headlines…
On the first full day of a state visit focused on the shared history between the United States and Britain, the King Charles III sprinkled in some ever-so-subtle rebuttals to President Donald Trump.
The King demonstrated what seemed to be a master class in Trump II diplomacy at a state dinner in the East Room of the White House Tuesday night, delivering a speech with all the right ingredients in just the right amounts.
Charles presented President Trump with the bell from a World War II-era British submarine — dubbed the HMS Trump — at the White House state dinner, where the two leaders bonded over highs and lows of the centuries-long US-UK relationship.
James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted over a social media post, signaling a renewed effort by the Justice Department to pursue charges against him after its bid last year ended in failure.
A federal grand jury in North Carolina charged Comey with making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat across state lines by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram, according to court records.
Comey is vowing to fight the charges against him, with his attorney saying the former FBI director “vigorously denies” the allegations and plans to contest the case in court.
A Manhattan judge ruled that James Comey’s daughter, Maurene, a former federal prosecutor who accused the Trump administration of firing her for political reasons, may proceed with a lawsuit in federal court over the government’s objections.
Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, has been indicted on charges of skirting federal record-keeping laws and concealing emails related to the origins of the coronavirus outbreak in China.
Morens, 78, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Greenbelt, MD, earlier this month on three felony counts for allegedly using a Gmail account to hide official communications about controversial federally funded projects studying coronaviruses in bats.
Federal regulators ordered a review of all station licenses owned by ABC, an extraordinary move to pressure a major television network whose programming has frequently angered President Trump.
The agency overseeing the review, the Federal Communications Commission, said in a filing that the action was related to an investigation into ABC’s diversity and inclusion policies.
Jimmy Kimmel shrugged off the First Couple’s call for his firing after his morbid quip about Melania Trump ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was interrupted by a shooting attack days later.
The president’s rhetoric on religion, along with hard-line immigration policies and the U.S. war in Iran, has splintered a coalition of Christian voters who returned him to the White House.
Elon Musk testified that his lawsuit against OpenAI and its leaders goes well beyond one company and into the future of a technology that “could also kill us all.”
Musk contended that greed led co-founder Sam Altman to pull the A.I. lab away from its nonprofit roots. OpenAI says that’s nonsense.
“I think they’re gonna try to make this lawsuit very complicated but it’s actually very simple,” Musk said as soon as he took the stand, staring directly at the jurors. “It’s not OK to steal a charity.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders are considering giving regulators more power to limit cost increases for consumers by making insurance companies seek prior state approval for any rate increase.
Sheriffs from across New York are taking a stand against Hochul’s proposed immigration protection measures, claiming they infringe on the ability of their agencies to protect and serve the public.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters she thinks legislative leaders and Hochul are approaching agreements on large policy items that have been holding up the state budget, which is approaching being a month late.
Citadel’s Ken Griffin said he’s meeting with Hochul tomorrow to talk about the future direction of America’s biggest city after a spat with Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his $238 million Manhattan penthouse.
Griffin called Mamdani’s viral video, which singled out Griffin and his Manhattan penthouse while announcing a new tax, a “personal attack” and a “profound lack of judgment.”
“I think the willingness of a mayor of New York to make this a policy debate a personal attack, just demonstrated a profound lack of judgment,” Griffin said during a panel discussion at the Norges Bank Investment Management conference in Oslo.
Mamdani acknowledged Griffin’s contribution to a new NYPD memorial honoring 9/11 heroes yesterday amid blowback for targeting the businessman in a “tax the rich” video.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who is running for New York governor, ripped Hochul and Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax proposal, branding it the latest left-wing policy that is “losing businesses and jobs each and every day”.
Blakeman reported income in 2025 from Israeli bonds and shares of ExxonMobil, his federal tax returns show.
A majority of New York State voters say their electricity bills are unreasonable — and nearly 70% fear controversial green energy mandates will send prices even higher, a new poll found.
Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appear to have found common ground again: They’ve got a plan for how Albany can help close the city’s budget gap. The only problem is the governor is not at all into it.
Mamdani and Menin had asked state lawmakers to authorize changes to the pass-through entity tax, or PTET, which allows some business people to keep state and local tax deductions that were limited by a 2017 federal tax law.
The two leaders joined forces to call on Hochul and state lawmakers to scale back a tax credit largely benefitting millionaires. Doing so would generate $1 billion in new revenue for the city, but the governor said flat-out that’s “not happening.”
Mamdani and Menin have reached a deal to push back the deadline for the mayor’s executive budget, blaming the late state budget in Albany.
Mamdani tapped Dana Kaplan as the city’s new “close Rikers czar” to orchestrate the closure of the jail complex and oversee the construction of four new borough-based jails near courthouses.
A man died by suicide after he was abruptly moved out of a shelter as part of Mamdani’s plan to turn the facility into an intake center for homeless people requesting beds, according to the man’s family and two others familiar with the case.
Mamdani wasn’t on the ballot in a Manhattan City Council race last night, but his political brand took a drubbing in what had become a proxy war testing the power of his endorsement.
Just before 10 p.m., Council staffer Carl Wilson declared victory with more than 40 percent of the vote and 99 percent of election night ballots tabulated. Lindsey Boylan, the democratic socialist backed by Mamdani, trailed far behind at under 26 percent.
The race could not be officially called until next week because no candidate secured more than 50 percent of the vote, the New York City Board of Elections said. But Boylan called Wilson to concede and Mamdani congratulated him on a “hard-fought victory.”
The race had been viewed as a proxy battle between the mayor and Menin, who backed Wilson, the former chief of staff to Erik Bottcher, the City Council member whose departure for the state Senate in February triggered the special election.
Wilson’s win would mean the district — home of the Stonewall monument and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement — would continue to be served by a gay representative, as it has since 1991. Wilson was the only openly gay candidate in the race.
On her way into voting in the New York City Council special election yesterday, Boylan said she was sorry if anyone felt she was an abusive boss.
John Chell, a Staten Island resident and the former NYPD chief of department, is considering throwing his hat in the ring for the 2029 New York City mayoral election.
The city’s first-ever deputy mayor for economic justice says her job is to grow the economy by delivering on Mamdani’s agenda for helping those who need it the most, which means no tax breaks to developers unless they improve New Yorkers’ lives.
Mamdani and city Democrat leaders stand accused of “racially engineering” New York City’s elite public high schools, according to a Brooklyn mom who last week brought a federal lawsuit against the mayor and the Department of Education.
As transit officials and Hochul talk tough against court claims and “billboard lawyers,” personal injury firms plaster ads on subway cars, in train stations and at bus stops, turning their lawyers into familiar faces while trolling for clients in the very system they sue.
The CEO of one of New York City’s largest health systems told congressmembers yesterday that hospital prices are going up not because of consolidation, but rather because of the rising cost of labor, drugs and medical supplies, among other pressures.
Brooklyn lawmakers decried an MTA plan to close sections of the G train on 10 weekends through the end of the year to make upgrades to the line, arguing the agency’s leaders didn’t care how service disruptions would affect the line’s 160,000 daily riders.
Timothy Brown, the man police beat in a Brooklyn liquor store during a botched drug arrest earlier this month, said that he doesn’t think he’ll ever recover from the incident.
With a ceremonial first roll of the dice, the Big Apple’s first ever full-fledged casino officially threw open its doors. Resorts World New York City in Queens will now offer up over 240 table games as part of its recent multi-billion dollar expansion.
When Resorts World officials opened the doors late morning, a flood of eager bettors and curious onlookers rushed up the escalators to the flashy new gambling hall on the third floor.
Emergency vehicles at the New York City area’s three major airports will be outfitted with new tracking devices after the NTSB highlighted a missing transponder aboard a fire truck as a contributor to last month’s deadly LaGuardia Airport plane crash.
An extremely rare pair of breeding deer was recently spotted on Long Island. The striking pair of piebald deer, consisting of a buck and a doe, was found within the Long Island Pine Barrens in Suffolk County, Pix11 reported.
A businessman accused of stealing more than $50 million from hundreds of people in the village of Hamilton near Colgate University as part of a massive Ponzi scheme pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the fraud, according to the state AG.
A proposal to redevelop a forlorn section of downtown Albany with a minor league soccer stadium as its centerpiece will not be going forward.
A Washington County man who shot and killed a 20-year-old woman when the vehicle she was in made a wrong turn into his driveway continued his attempts to overturn his murder conviction yesterday before a state appeals court.
City of Troy officials have refused to pay nearly a half-year’s worth of rent to a Lansingburgh recreational complex. According to City Hall, they can do that.
Town Democrats have lambasted Republican Town Supervisor Peter Crummey over the decision to cut the town’s funding to Colonie Senior Service Centers in the 2026 budget.
Saratoga County supervisor Sarah Burger has pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired by alcohol to resolve a drunken driving case.
The Albany city school district is using a $10 million grant to pay the last of its costs for a $98 million project that makes improvements at all of its schools.
The Schuyler Heights Fire Company announced plans to cease its operations next month amid an ongoing legal battle with the department’s district commissioners.
After nearly seven decades of business, the official closure of St. Peter’s Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Albany is imminent, and it comes with a mass relocation of employees and patients.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
