A couple of days ago I encountered a marvelous commentary on this week’s Torah parshah (reading) of Tazria-Metzora. It was composed by Joy Ladin, who occupies the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University, America’s flagship Orthodox institute. She is also the only openly out trans professor at YU of whom I am aware.

Cantor Sharon Grainer, our first cantorial candidate is here! She currently serves in Philadelphia at the venerable Temple BZBI, which can trace its roots back to 1840. Before cantorial school, she studied Yiddish and literature at the University of Toronto, spent a year at the Pardes Institute of Jewish studies in Jerusalem and overall has had an interesting Jewish path.

Wednesday night marked the end of the first two days of our weeklong celebration of Passover. That meant I finally returned on-line and caught up on some news. Like many people, I was disturbed to see some videos taken when United Airlines asked local law enforcement to remove Dr. David Dao from one of their planes. The trail of his blood left on the plane and his face was gruesome.

In younger days, I had a more literary bent. That meant I spent far more time with books than I permit myself now. For my first two and a half decades, I imbibed novels. Dostoevsky, Gogol, Thomas Hardy, William Makepeace Thackeray. Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe and Robert A. Heinlein. Ursula K. LeGuin, Isaac Babel and Neal Stephenson.

For many years, AIPAC’s annual policy conference has been held in Washington DC. When it first began, only a few hundred people attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This year, there were over 18,000 people from all walks of life.

Some of our lay and professional leadership recently returned from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s convention for large synagogues held in Vorhees, New Jersey. (Steve Sirkin, Steve Blake, Liza Milliner and Fred Rothstein all traveled east. My apologies if I’ve neglected someone!) These gatherings are important, as they keep our community apprised of best practices.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Kohelet famously notes that “v’ain kol hadash takhat hashemesh”--There is nothing entirely new under the sun. Yet many things require renewal, and that process of invigoration can give familiar things the shine of novelty. Such change helps us appreciate the familiar and sometimes see them in a new light.