June 26, 2026 Categories: NY / Politics / From the Paper
Albany Beat
Twisting In The Wind
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is feeling the kind of pain from the federal government that the state inflicts year after year on county governments across the state. In some counties more than 80 percent of the budget is set by unfunded mandates levied by the state that county governments must cover. As a result, many counties are forced to make unwelcome choices – either cut services, raise taxes, or figure out how to regularly expand the county tax base. Now the Trump administration is changing the financial allotment New York receives for environmental measures, health care, immigration rules, etc. As Cuomo agonizes over how these changes will negatively impact New York’s budget and what the state can afford to provide for the poor and indigent, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is gathering fellow attorneys general from across the country to file lawsuits galore. Earlier this month, Cuomo took a swipe at Trump’s decision to end health care cost-sharing subsidies. “Unable to move the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in Congress, President Trump is now attempting to administratively dismantle the ACA bit by bit,” said Cuomo. “His actions will slash benefits and raise premiums in many health plans by 20 percent next year according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and it will single handedly destabilize insurance markets. With a swipe of a pen, President Trump puts the health of New Yorkers at risk…. As President Trump executes on his mission to strip health care protection from those who need it most, we stand ready to join states across the nation to sue the federal government. We will not go backwards.”
Cutbacks At Aish NY
The departure of Rabbi Jeremy and Irit Block from Albany after one year of service to its Jewish community left an educational void for the first time in more than five years at the state-run SUNY Albany (or UAlbany) campus. In July the Blocks moved back to Israel with their children, who were students at the Lubavitch-run Maimonides Hebrew Day School. Irit Block taught art at the school while Jeremy spent time on campus doing outreach. When other rabbis left for greener pastures the void was filled but this year was different. The reason given was that the financial costs of more than $100,000 a year to run the Aish program with trips and to support a family in Albany was too much. “It has nothing to do with the Albany campus or the desire to want to be there,” Rabbi Elliot Matthias, executive director of the Aish Campus Programs & Hasbara Fellowships, told The Jewish Press. “Unfortunately we’re a non-profit organization and we depend on donations and sometimes things are better, sometimes it’s more difficult. We have to make decisions. It was nothing to do with Albany or the campus or the staff, it was just a financial decision. Unfortunately we didn’t have the funding to be able to continue our programs.” Rabbi Gavriel Horan, now the director at the Baltimore-based Jewish Experience Maryland, spent two years as the Aish campus director at UAlbany where there are approximately 4,000 Jews. “Of the four Jewish campus outreach groups, we only reach about 10 percent of the Jewish campus population,” Horan said last year on The Jewish View, a program taped in Albany. “We all serve different niches. We all feel we could be doing more. The way we view our organization is really about education. We’re much more focused on education. We run a Maimonides program, which is pretty much a national program now. The goal is really to bring the wisdom of Judaism down to earth to show how it applies to every person. From every walk of life the wisdom of Judaism is very, very relevant.” Clearly the void Aish left when it closed up at the UAlbany campus requires the other Jewish campus groups to fill in the gap of educational outreach Aish had so ably filled.
