Embedded into the infrastructure of Jewish values is the deep decency of acknowledging the good that others do for you. In Hebrew, this mentschlichkeit is known as hakarat hatov – literally, recognizing the goodness.
Few moments are as sweet as “thank you” conveyed from the heart. At the end of the school year such important expressions of gratitude usually flow over the rim of our happiness as we acknowledge the goodness that the schools have conferred upon our children. Teachers, school administrators, volunteers, community professionals and philanthropists are to be thanked individually and collectively for trying to enable our children to learn and to grow toward their respective potentials.
In truth, even as we congratulate and celebrate our children for reaching the next formal educational marker along the path of their lives, we ought also to thank them too for completing the ten-month grind of the school year. For many children, it is not easy. Nor for most, is it generally a great deal of fun.
But the months roll by and by the end of the school calendar, schools and parent associations hold their respective celebrations to publicly acknowledge that something remarkably good and important has been achieved by everyone at school for another year.
After October 7, the combined efforts of the Jewish educational system and its students are more than the completion of an arduous, annual teaching/learning cycle. Indeed, they are a steel-hard, uncompromising response to the aggression against Jewish communities around the world. Families and the Jewish schools their children attend, affirm with the clear-eyed resolve of the ancient Hebrew prophets, the inviolability of our promise to our forebears and to God that we will live Jewish lives.
In helping us fulfill that promise, we rely heavily upon our teachers. We return to a statement by the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks to explain why that is so. It is a quotation we have cited before in our weekly update.
“For Jews, education is not just what we know. It’s who we are. No people ever cared for education more. Our ancestors were the first to make education a religious command, and the first to create a compulsory universal system of schooling – eighteen centuries before Britain… the Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, and the Romans built amphitheaters, Jews built schools. They knew that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. So, Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of the mind.”
Rabbi Sacks understood that we will defend the increasingly brazen attempts by haters of Israel and haters of Jews to erase our history, our people and our civilization, through Jewish education. Thus, especially at the end of this school year, to the educators and their students, to the professional and lay community leaders and to the educational philanthropists who are strengthening the Jewish school system, GAJE says: Thank you. Congratulations. Well done. Please continue from strength to strength.
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The appeal by the Government of Ontario of Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou’s refusal last summer to throw out GAJE’s application for fairness in educational funding, was heard earlier this week by a panel of three judges. The court reserved its decision.
GAJE will publish the results of the appeal as soon as it is known to us.
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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.
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Shabbat shalom.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
June 21, 2024
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 