Next week on Tuesday, June 11, the Divisional Court will hear the appeal by the Government of Ontario from the decision last August of Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou refusing to throw out GAJE’s application for fairness in educational funding before it has been argued and considered on its merits. If Ontario’s appeal fails, GAJE’s application proceeds, finally, to a hearing. If Ontario’s appeal succeeds, GAJE will appeal.
In the year 2024, it should be unacceptable in Ontario that only Catholic education is fully funded by the government to the exclusion of all other religious groups. How can Ontario still believe that such discrimination is appropriate in modern, civil society? Of course, it is not.
It should be noted that the appeal will be heard on the eve of the festival of Shavuot. It was on the first Shavuot ever, of course, that the imperative to teach our children, to be learners lifelong, was enshrined as a theological obligation for the Jewish people. We understood from the very beginning of our existence as a distinct group, that the forward passing of knowledge, traditions and values is the deeply engrained mechanism that ensures generational permanence.
That is why, irrespective of century or community, the education of our children was the first and highest priority for community elders. Teaching has been always sanctified and teachers have been always revered for the continuation of all that is precious in our civilization. It is through Jewish education that we imbue our children with the intellectual, emotional and theological foundation to help them understand and then grasp the life-affirming message and mission of our faith to join in the holy task of improving an increasingly needy world.
Shavuot brings to mind and to heart the irreplaceability of Jewish education in raising “Jewish” children. That the legal proceeding provides a springboard of sorts to the start of Shavuot this year is a poignant symbolic and emotional launch to GAJE’s effort to have the courts declare that Ontario’s minority communities must be treated fairly and justly in relation to the education of our children too.
In the post-October 7 world, raising Jews is how to fight back against the malevolent and/or mindless people who shout and otherwise demonstrate their hatred of Jews and of the only Jewish state on earth.
The malevolent direct the clever, unceasing, demonization of Jews and of Israel by the deliberate, well-funded, well-organized inversion of lies as truth.
The mindless, however, are victims of their own ignorance.
And so, as a final note to this update, readers should know it was written on the 80th anniversary of D Day. Three generations have been born since that enormous day in 1944 when courage joined with resolve on the coast of Normandy, when so very many soldiers died in the awful chaos of steel, bullets, fire and rage on the bloodied beaches. That day was the first in the 11-month march that led ultimately to the end of Nazi rule of terror and tyranny.
How horribly sad and how bitterly ironic that the mindless demonstrators today who froth at and vilify Jews and the State of Israel espouse the very same cause and champion the very same sorts of racist, truly genocidalist individuals and governments, that the Allied world 80 and more years ago, fought so desperately to vanquish.
GAJE will publish the results of the appeal hearing as soon as it is known to us.
•••
If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit for fairness in educational funding in Ontario, 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.
•••
Shabbat shalom.
Chag Shavuot Samayach.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
June 7, 2024
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 