Strengthening society through viable independent schools

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has succinctly and pointedly expressed the deeply rooted, permanently engrained significance of education to the Jewish people.

In his collection of essays, From Optimism to Hope, he wrote: “Long ago the Jewish people came to the conclusion that to defend a country you need an army. But to defend a civilization you need schools. The single most important social institution is the place where we hand on our values to the next generation – where we tell our children where we’ve come from, what ideals we fought for, and what we learned on the way. Schools are where we make children our partners in the long and open-ended task of making a more gracious world.”

Making our schools affordable to all families who seek a Jewish education for their children has been – and is – the single motivating force driving all of GAJE’s efforts.

Moreover, and especially, GAJE is determined to demonstrate through the legal system that since the permanent viability of Jewish schools – and of other independent, publicly monitored, denominational schools too – is vital to the continued future of the smaller communities served by these schools, the viability of these schools is also vital to the continued future of Canada’s thriving multicultural, multi-religious, tolerant society.

Thus, a public educational system that is also committed to helping ensure the permanent viability of the smaller communities’ schools will also help enhance and strengthen the overall educational system as well as society itself.

•••

Shabbat Shalom GAJE July 12, 2019