Good morning. It's Tuesday. We'll meet the rabbi that the 92nd Street Y is hiring in an effort, its chief executive says, to "more publicly assert our Jewish identity." We'll also find out about the crop that is being harvested legally in New York State for the first time in decades. |
 | | Via Romemu |
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Now, as an unsettling stream of antisemitism surges nationally, it wants to "more publicly assert our Jewish identity," as Seth Pinsky, its chief executive, put it. He said the 92nd Street Y was creating a new position, senior director of Jewish life, and hiring Rabbi David Ingber, above, the leader of Romemu, a synagogue on the Upper West Side that describes itself as "a progressive, fully egalitarian Jewish community of people from all walks of life — young and old, orthodox and secular, multiethnic and intermarried, conservative and liberal, committed and disillusioned, of any and all genders." |
There is no question that this is a tense time. Last month on social media, the entertainer Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, posted antisemitic comments, and the Nets' All-Star guard Kyrie Irving posted a link to an antisemitic film. (Adidas cut ties with West, and Nike — which had been scheduled to introduce the next version of Irving's signature sneakers today — suspended its relationship with him. The Nets also suspended him.) |
And last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning to synagogues in New Jersey about a security threat. The agency said later that they had found the source, whom the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Newark office described as a man with "radical extremist views and ideology as well as an extreme amount of hate against the Jewish community." |
Pinsky said that bringing in Rabbi Ingber was "an evolutionary step" for the 92nd Street Y, which is known as a cultural institution and is renovating one of its performance spaces and building a new dance center. |
"This is not a fundamental change in who we are," he said, "but a recalibration of how we manifest who we are and how troubling are the times." He added that the 92nd Street Y was "well advantaged to create a bridge" to those Jews "who are entirely disconnected from traditional Jewish institutions." |
At the same time the 92nd Street Y is raising money for a $15 million fund named for Rabbi Peter Rubinstein, the director of Jewish community at the 92nd Street Y and its Bronfman Center for Jewish Life from 2014 until earlier this year. Rabbi Ingber will take on those responsibilities, with Rabbi Rubinstein as the emeritus director. |
Ingber said the 92nd Street Y and Romemu "are both doing the core work of deepening the Jewish connection and Jewish identity where antisemitism has been on the rise." He said he would work on "bringing an emphasis to elevating Jewish life, Jewish wisdom and Jewish practice." |
"The Y has a track record as a global leader in culture and art," he said. "It's positioned at this moment to expand the programmatic reaches and emphasis on Judaism and Jewish programming, but it's a continuation around antisemitism." |
It's a sunny day near the high 50s. The evening is clear, with temps dropping to the low 40s. |
Suspended today (Election Day). |
 | | Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic candidate, and her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times, Sarah Blesener for The New York Times |
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High hopes for a new harvest |
 | | Paul Barbera for The New York Times |
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Our writer John Ortved says it's a moment some cannabis growers had prepared for even before New York legalized recreational marijuana last year for people 21 and older. The state has since issued 261 conditional licenses to farmers who met criteria laid out by the state's Office of Cannabis Management. |
Some of the licenses went to small-time farmers like Aswad Sallie and Jasmine Burrems, who hope to make a go of it in this new industry. Until recently they concentrated on herbs and flowers, squash and watermelons on the eight and a half acres they lease in Copake, N.Y. They also started the Institute of Afrofuturist Ecology, an advocacy group for Black farmers. |
Burems, 37 and Sallie, 46, moved there in 2014, the year they also started a family and about a year after they met at a hot-yoga studio in Brooklyn where he was an instructor. She had been working as an herbalist, jazz singer and doula. They decided to leave Bedford-Stuyvesant behind, and after settling in, they began growing cannabis plants to meet the surging demand for products containing CBD, or cannabidiol, a nonintoxicating derivative of hemp. |
This year's crop included strains of cannabis that are rich in the psychoactive substance THC. As they had done with harvests during the CBD craze, Sallie and Burems called in friends and relatives to help with the harvest, arming them with specialized shears called loppers to untether the plants from the ground and strip the leaves off. They often worked to a classic soul soundtrack — Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder, among others — blasted from a solar-powered stereo. |
The team loaded the plants into an old pickup truck. Sallie drove them to a former cafe nearby, where they were bucked and threshed. |
They will be dried, cured and tested — anything grown to be consumed in New York, even cannabis, must receive the imprimatur of the Department of Agriculture and Markets, whose inspectors check for contaminants like mildew and heavy metals (flight paths over farms can cause problems for crops). |
But the harvest will not be sold — not immediately, anyway. Like other farmers across the state, Burems and Sallie are waiting for the cannabis management office to finalize rules for the processing and sale of marijuana as well as to approve the first of 900 applications from would-be retailers. |
Seth Jacobs, who farms 40 acres in Argyle, N.Y., about 45 miles northeast of Albany, is also waiting for the go-ahead. He called the decriminalization of marijuana "the opportunity of a lifetime" after growing organic vegetables and hemp as demand for CBD climbed. Now he and family are growing stronger stuff with names like Gorilla Glue, Sour Diesel and Sweet Cheese — and waiting out the regulatory uncertainty that comes with the new crop. |
"Cannabis is not for the fainthearted," Jacobs said. "These days, whenever I get a sales call about a small business loan, I say, 'You be careful. We're in the cannabis business. I will take your money and you will be ruined.' And they hang up really fast." |
It was 1977. I was 16 and had a job at a shoe store on 46th Street between Madison and Fifth. |
A man came in to the store looking for a hard-to-find style: a dress half-boot with a buckle. To make things more difficult, he took a size we rarely kept in stock. |
But not only did I have what he was looking for, I was able to offer it to him in both black and brown. And they were on sale — $24.88 a pair. |
He took a slip of paper out of his wallet, wrote on it and gave it to me. On it were instructions for the Alvin Theater box office to give me house seats to "Annie," one of the year's biggest hits. He said he would keep an eye out for me and whoever I brought as my date that night. |
The man, it turned out, was Peter Howard, one of Broadway's great dance music arrangers, who in addition to "Annie," worked on productions of "Chicago," "The Tap Dance Kid" and "Hello, Dolly!" |
I don't know if he did keep an eye out for me that night. And he died in 2008. But thank you, Mr. Howard. I took my sister. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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