It makes sense that the festival of Pesach falls in the month of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish calendar. Which month could be more substantively appropriate, other than the first, to celebrate liberation from slavery leading to the ultimate forging, at Mt. Sinai, of the galvanized majesty of everlasting Jewish peoplehood?
During the last century, modern Jewish history evolved through blood, thunder and smoke to inscribe – for all time – four epochal experiences into the Jewish commemorative calendar. These experiences are added, as it were, to the anvil of Jewish history on which the fullness of Jewish life emerges.
On 27 Nisan, we commemorate Yom Hashoah v’Hagvurah (the solemn recall of Holocaust and Heroism).
On 4 Iyar, we commemorate Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day for the fallen of Israel).
On 5 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Israel’s Independence Day).
On 28 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (The reunification of Jerusalem [in 1967 after the Jordanian army had cleaved the Old City from the new city in 1948, expelled all Jews from the Jewish quarter of the Old City and destroyed every vestige of Jewish life there.]).
The feeling of being part of Jewish peoplehood derives from our shared theology and traditions, our shared memory of distant historic events and the shared transcendent registry of modern events, culture and experiences with whose entries we are all familiar and understand if not always quite imagine.
Each of us, in every generation, are trustees for the Jewish wellbeing of our young children and guardians of the wider Jewish future. We accept and honour these responsibilities because it is right and important to do so and because our forebears did so for us. Even as we hope our children and their children will do so for the descendants that will follow them.
It is the role of our system of formal and informal Jewish education to reinforce what our children learn at home and help foster the marvellous feeling of Jewish belonging and peoplehood into rock solid permanence through time immemorial. It is GAJE’s role to do our utmost to try to help make formal Jewish education affordable for all the families that seek it for their children. That is our promise.
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CORRECTION
In last week’s update, we wrote that the GAJE was founded 15 years ago. In fact, GAJE was
founded 10 years ago on Pesach. It just seems like it’s been 15 years.
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GAJE expects to be before the Court of Appeal in the Fall, arguing for the right to a hearing on the merits of our application for fair educational funding in Ontario. When we learn the date of the hearing, we will share it with our readers.
If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
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Shabbat shalom. Chag samayach. Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
April 25, 2025
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 