Looking back….
On August 21, Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice rejected the attempt by the Government of Ontario to throw out of court GAJE’s application to compel Ontario to introduce fairness in the province’s educational funding.
In 46 pages of compelling, controlled reasoning and detailed research, Judge Papageorgiou explained why she believed GAJE’s case deserves to be heard on its merits 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 revisiting 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. “
Judge Papageorgiou did not decide the case on its merits. She was not asked to do so. She was asked to decide whether GAJE’s case should be given a hearing in the courts. She decided that it should. Her decision was enormously significant. For the first time in nearly three decades, a court agreed that parents and grandparents of children attending Jewish schools ought to have their pleas for funding fairness and justice adjudicated in court. GAJE still does not have a date for a hearing on its merits. Not surprisingly, Ontario brought a motion for permission to appeal Judge Papageorgiou’s ruling. A decision on that motion is expected early in the new year.
And so, we wait and hope that Judge Papageorgiou’s decision will not be overruled.
Then, on October 7, Jewish history changed forever.
The events of that horrific day and the stunningly shameless manifestations of hatred toward Israelis and Jews, in the day’s aftermath, on the streets, in the workplaces and academies throughout the civilized world, left us – at first – with diminished space in our emotion-choked hearts and minds for pondering the next steps of GAJE’s application.
But we – and the Jewish people – found our strength and marshaled the resolve and the resources to repair and restore what had been diminished and bruised in our hearts to carry forward GAJE’s cause even as Jews around the world found the courage and the voice to affirm and assert the blessing of Jewish peoplehood and of its permanence.
Anti-Israel protesters of all ages and backgrounds deny, ignore and even gaslight Hamas’ evil purpose – despite the ubiquitous evidence, including from the frequent pronouncements of their leaders – that is, the destruction of Israel and the slaughter Jews.
Hamas is the vanguard of a malevolent force of hardcore, resolute haters of Israel and of Jews. In this mission, Hamas is joined by Hezbelloh in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Brotherhood wherever they are situated. The ruling Shia theocracy of Iran is the paymaster, trainer, and director of this truly genocidal collective. The one “holy” purpose this group shares is the murder and slaughter of Jews and the elimination of the only sovereign Jewish state on planet earth.
Despite the demonstrators disrupting normal life in the cities of the West, despite the equivocation of the leaders of Academia, despite the bad faith, distorted, “balanced” news coverage of the war, neither Hamas nor their hateful confederates are freedom fighters.
They are not liberators. They demonstrated the depth and the beastly depravity of their hatred for Jews and for Israel in the ghoulish manner in which they attempted to “liberate” the Gaza-area communities on October 7. The mass slaughter on October 7 by Hamas was in addition to their battlefield tactics of endangering, harming and even killing fellow Gazans and firing rockets primarily at Israel civilians from behind the cover of Palestinian civilians.
The ignorant and/or untruthful anti-Israel demonstrators shout that the Jews are occupiers or have no connection to the Land of Israel. Let us remind them that the very name Jew derives from the name for the place Judea, where our Jewish ancestors lived and who, in their revolutionary belief system that all humanity was created in the image of God, gave the world the Bible.
The Jews of Israel are actually fighting for their right to live sovereign in their own country on the very land on which our ancestors lived and speaking the very language they spoke.
Looking forward…
And thus,
In the year 2024, our community – along with all caring Jewish communities worldwide – joins the fight to defend Israel and the Jewish people, inspired and informed by Jewish education, by “being, knowing, doing and celebrating Jewish”. That is our task going forward into calendar 2024. It has been the task of every generation from Jewish antiquity to today.
•••
Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.
Shabbat shalom. Happy, healthy, peaceful 2024.
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
December 29, 2023
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 