Perhaps 5784 will be different?

The setting of the sun this evening brings the rising of the New Year 5784.

We greet the new year with festivity, celebration. And the new year greets a period of 10 days of personal, deliberative soul-searching and focused reflection on who we truly are. Not a few prayers during the next days will be uttered for our children – for all children. For their own sake, of course, if not foremost, and for the sake of the ancient-modern Jewish people whose unfolding history we hope our children will happily join.

It thus cannot be a coincidence that our Sages established Torah and Haftarah readings on Rosh Hashanah that specifically relate to children. The wise rabbis understood that soul-searching necessarily points an emotional compass towards our children. And so, they aimed our thoughts and aspirations to images of children – our children.

As we wrote last year in this space, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described the essence of Rosh Hashana as thinking about, securing and building the future. That future, he emphasized, depends squarely upon Jewish education. We secure the Jewish future by bringing as many youngsters as possible into the sustaining domain of affordable Jewish education.

Helping build the Jewish future through access to affordable Jewish education, has been and remains the promise of GAJE to the community.

For the first time since GAJE was formed in 2015, we say happily though still very tentatively, that we have a step, finally, on which we can stand more firmly toward fulfilling the promise.

Readers of this weekly update know, one of the key ways to making Jewish education affordable is by bringing about change to the Ontario’s unfair educational funding.  The Supreme Court decision of 1996, in the Adler case, ruled that Ontario could legally fund the education of Roman Catholic children to the exclusion of all other religions. The Court did not prevent Ontario from extending funding to other, independent, denominational schools. Nor, has Ontario ever suggested that its policy is fair to non-Catholic children seeking to attend their own religious schools. Rather, Ontario simply believes it is immune from being legally compelled to change its policy. 

Thus, as readers again know, GAJE launched an applicaiton asking the Court to reassess the applicability of the 1996 Adler decision to the circumstances of Ontario in 2023.

Ontario has tried to prevent GAJE from pleading its case on the merits. The government brought a motion to dismiss our case on a summary basis. The government lost.

In a remarkable decision of 46 pages, Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou ruled that GAJE should have the opportunity to make its case in court. She wrote:

“There is a reasonable chance that the Grassroots Applicants will be able to satisfy the test in Bedford and Carter (the rules for reassessing Supreme Court decisions). In that regard, there is a reasonable chance that an application judge may find that the Grassroots Applicants have raised: i) new circumstances or evidence which have fundamentally shifted the parameters of the debate; and/or ii) new legal issues as a result of significant developments in the law which support the revisitation of binding precedent.

“My finding in this regard is not based upon one single argument raised by the Grassroots Applicants; it is based upon the combined effect and totality of the new circumstances (social, political and legislative) and developments in the law they have raised.”

But Ontario is still determined to block GAJE’s path to a hearing on the merits of our case, Ontario is seeking leave to appeal Judge Papageorgiou’s decision. We are dismayed at the government’s tactics, but no longer shocked.

Queen’s Park treats the 150,000 children who attend independent schools in this province as educational pariahs. The western provinces and Quebec wisely and appropriately extend funding to children who attend independent schools. After all, the provinces correctly reason, independent school children are also children of their respective provinces. The provinces understand that it is in the best interest of the province – let alone in the best interest of the children and their families – that independent school children too have access to the best education the province can reasonably facilitate for them. 

If Rosh Hashanah truly concerns “thinking about, securing and building the future,” as Rabbi Sacks wrote, then the eve of Rosh Hashanah is a fitting moment for GAJE to restate its promise of doing all we can to help.

The four most important words of Jewish inspiration and motivation were spoken by the Prophet Ezekiel and re-tooled for modern times: “Od loh avdah tikvateinu.” (We have not yet lost our hope.) GAJE very much takes those words to heart.

The late Prof. Michael Brown, one of the Jewish world’s pre-eminent historians and educators counselled against feelings of despair or helplessness that often accompany worried thoughts for an uncertain Jewish future.  “The future has not yet been written”, he reminded us.

It falls to us – all of us for whom Judaism and its people are precious – to write that future. This is our generation’s opportunity to try to end the funding discrimination that exists in Ontario. If we do not try, who will? And if not now, then when? Perhaps 5784 will be different?

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If you share our view, we urge you to let your Member of the Provincial Parliament know of your disappointment that Ontario is intent on blocking GAJE from even having a day in court to argue the merits of our case.

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If you wish to support GAJE’s lawsuit, please click here.

For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com

Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of underwriting the costs of the lawsuit.

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Shabbat shalom and l’shana tovah techatevu v’techatemu.

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

September 15, 2023