Weekly Update: August 12, 2016 — 8 Av 5776

“If you will it, it is no dream”

The website this week of Jeducation World, an initiative of the Pincus Fund for Jewish Education, contains an article written by Michael B. Soberman, a senior educational consultant at the iCenter for Israel Education, and an experienced Jewish communal professional formerly of Toronto.

Soberman wrote about a public school in Chicago’s southwest neighborhood, North Lawndale named more than a hundred years ago for Theodore Herzl. It is called the Theodore Herzl School of Excellence.

Soberman tenderly tells the story of the school’s origins and of its present character. Soberman writes that the school has remained loyal to Herzl’s inspirational legacy even after all of these years.

“What is striking about the school, its teachers, staff and Principal, Tamara Davis, is the commitment to excellence and encouraging the students to follow their dreams, a message that Theodore Herzl promoted all over Europe more than a century earlier. Herzl’s dream was about the creation of a Jewish State, one he never lived to see come to fruition but his message goes beyond the Jewish community and suggests that anything is possible if you have dreams and then pursue them.”

Soberman writes further: “I was, and remain inspired by the teachers, staff and students of the Herzl School of Excellence and take great comfort in the fact that more than 100 years after his death, Theodore Herzl’s message remains universal and relevant.” (You can read the complete article here: http://jeducationworld.com/2016/08/100-years-later-herzls-message-remains-universal-in-the-unlikeliest-of-places/.)

Herzl’s message rings as true for our community as it does for the staff and students in the North Lawndale school and as it did for the pioneers, fighters and founders of the Jewish state.

If we will it, it is no dream.

Our community can make Jewish education affordable. We have not lost our hope in making it happen.

•••

Reminders:

1. Please contact your rabbi to ask him or her to speak out during the High Holidays or even sooner on behalf of affordable Jewish education.
2. If your family is eligible for the tuition cap program at the AHS or Leo Baeck campus in Thornhill, please enroll. Contact the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education at the UJA Federation for further information, 416-635-2883.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE