Mitchell Consky, the CJN’s education reporter, wrote a highly telling article documenting a rebounding interest, since the enrollment nadir wrought by Covid, in Jewish Sunday school education.
Consky gathers UJA data that shows part-time Jewish education, though moderately attended, has nearly doubled from its COVID low. He interviews parents of young families, reports on an impending new weekday after-school educational program and community officials to paint a portrait of the re-seeding and re-greening of a field of Jewish education and involvement that had fallen onto yield-less, fallow times.
Daniel Held, chief program officer with the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto described the current Jewish educational horizon in the GTA. “More and more people in our community are participating in Jewish education that’s right for them,” he said, referring to parallel growth in supplementary education enrollment and Hebrew day school enrollment.
Increased demand for supplementary education arises amid growing concerns about antisemitism in Ontario public schools. While day school growth stems from several factors, “including strong school performance during the pandemic, post-Oct. 7 concerns about antisemitism and new scholarship support.”
Thought the article is ostensibly about parents seeking more family appropriate Jewish education for their children, the truer, underlying message is one of more and more young families seeking the mutually sustaining strength and comfort that flow from finding meaningful ways of participating in a sense of peoplehood.
One Jewish parent in Toronto of two children ages 10 and 5, told Consky that enrolling her children in Sunday school, this year, was a deliberate response to a moment that felt unsettled.
“Given the geopolitical circumstances of the world, and just wanting to feel connected to people that make us feel safe, we felt that being a little bit more immersed in a Jewish community would be beneficial to them”, she said.
Another parent of Jewish children in public schools told Consky that she wanted her children to build friendships with other Jewish kids, understand their background and feel rooted in Jewish culture.
As Daniel Held pointed out, families are increasingly seeking and finding their own, unique pathways during these troubling times, because of these troubling times, to Jewish education. And the reason is plain. One of the parents succinctly expressed it. She wanted her family “to feel connected to people that make us feel safe.”
But it was not only for the feeling of heightened safety that she enrolled her children in weekend Jewish school. It was for the wider, more permanently lasting benefit to her children from learning and then knowing, that they are part of the Jewish community.
The Consky article is available at https://thecjn.ca/news/sunday-schools-rebound-as-families-seek-jewish-community-on-their-own-terms/
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
March 27, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 