This update is the last of calendar year 5786. The next one arrives on the eve of Rosh Hashana 5787.
The numbers are real, yet also, almost abstract, like very high floating clouds. We understand the science, but we cannot truly “reach” or “touch” them from within the earth-bound pressures and pleasures of our daily lives.
One way, however, that the numbers are within “reach”, is to understand them as the opposite of an abstraction, namely, as an affirmation of palpably verifiable Jewish peoplehood. Thousands of years: forebears, Moses our teacher, kings and judges, prophets, destruction, expulsion, dispersion world-wide and then…Return.
Upon reflection – which is one of Rosh Hashana’s perfect pre-occupations – the duration, nature, persistence, underlying values and singularity of Jewish peoplehood are a remarkable attestation of something undeniably transcendent and vital for the world.
As GAJE awaits the decision of the Supreme Court that will let us know whether we can proceed with our case for fairness in educational funding in Ontario, this moment in our annual Jewish calendar cycle deserves a re-appreciation of the peoplehood that has brought fulfillment and purpose to Jews from the very beginning, as well as blessing to the world. Indeed, it is the goose-bumpy sense of belonging to the Jewish people that motivates and has motivated GAJE’s efforts for more than a decade.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog succinctly expressed the notion of Jewish peoplehood at a ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem in which he received an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York.
“The State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry are both facing their own challenges, but the Jewish people have a shared destiny and a shared responsibility….
“May we all continue to build together that same wondrous chain of the Jewish people: a chain connecting tradition to scholarship, Judaism to the wider world, Israel to the Diaspora, and past to future….”.
President Herzog spoke eloquently. He referenced “shared destiny and a shared responsibility”, and the “wondrous chain of the Jewish people…connecting…past and future.”
In speaking thus, President Herzog summoned the language and the themes held sacrosanct by countless sages and “ordinary” Jews throughout the ages. He deliberately echoed the parameters of Jewish peoplehood taught by Moses himself in his farewell address to the People of Israel – formerly a rabble of slaves, but at that moment, a free nation governed by law and principle – as they were about to enter into the Land of Israel. With a stunning economy of words, Moses framed the essential aspect of Jewish peoplehood. (Deuteronomy, Chap. 29)
“You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God: your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials—the entire body of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from chopper of wood to drawers of water – to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God…”.
“And not with you alone, do I make this covenant … But with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and also with those who are not with us here this day.”
Moses swept into his arms and into the eternal embrace of Jewish life and Jewish responsibility, the entirety of the people. All of us. Those present at that epochal moment. And those not present, namely, those who had died during the formative, 40-year march to the Land of Israel, and those of us not yet born. All of us. For all time.
That is why GAJE has striven these past years to achieve funding fairness for Jewish education – for the sake of those among us, those we brought us to this day, and for those yet to be born.
This is our reflection of Jewish education, peoplehood, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Moses, our teacher as we approach Rosh Hashana 5787.
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit to achieve fairness in educational funding, 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 Thank you, in advance, for considering doing so.
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education
September 4, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 