This week we completed the remembrance and commemoration of a quartet of Springtime dates that are vital in fashioning our framework of values as individuals as a people: Pesach, Yom Hashoah v’Hagvurah, Yom Hazicaron and Yom Ha’atzma’ut. Indeed, they comprise…

Alberta provides funding to its independent schools. It recognizes the importance to its residents and the benefit to its society in doing so. Nevertheless the discussion is still engaged there about how to refine and whether to expand such funding.…

It is an anniversary worth noting.  At least we believe so. Some seven years ago, Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE) was formed. On April 24, 2015, GAJE published its Mission Statement, the core statement of which is “to make…

The holiday of Pesach begins tonight. Six years ago we wrote in this space that Pesach is the only holy day on our religious calendar whose core commandment is the coming together of family and friends and invited guests for…

Opponents of the idea that Queen’s Park underwrite part or all of the cost of independent schools maintain that such a policy would undermine the public school system. They make this charge despite ongoing, documented evidence to the contrary from…

(Dedicated to the memory of Syd Eisen, of blessed memory) It is very sad and very humbling that for the second week in a row, we dedicate this update to the memory of an individua, whose chief concern, as we…

It is likely that every Jewish community on earth, directly or indirectly, was the beneficiary of the vast goodness of the late Julia Koschitzky’s heart, of her irrepressible will and of her unequaled ability to help others. Such was her…

The creative, generously philanthropic initiative some four years ago that drastically reduced annual tuition at CHAT proved empirically that enrollment is directly related to tuition. That program became the vanguard for other affordability initiatives by UJA Federation and participating day…

To say we have been living for more than two years in difficult, disquieting times abuses the term “understatement.” The global Covid pandemic, the occupation of downtown Ottawa and a handful of Canadian-American border crossings by a frightful confederacy of…

The surest way to avoid indifference to Jewish life Jack Wertheimer, professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, published an article this week entitled, Which American Jews are most distant from Israel?,that appeared on the eJP website.…