Last week Ontario agreed to make Rapid Covid Antigen Testing Kits available to families of independent schools. In light of the rising tide of the Omicron variant, it could hardly have done otherwise. Protecting children’s lives should be high on…

Heavy-handed, oppressive, cynical and self-serving behaviour by governments around the world have created, over the years, a healthy scepticism for the notion that human rights universally carry meaning and weight and a measure of importance countries and societies other than…

Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk issued her annual report this week. Not surprisingly her staff discovered and uncovered sums of money that were spent ill spent. Among her findings, as reported by CBC, Ontario disbursed more than $200 million to businesses…

As readers of this weekly update know, GAJE’s core mission is to try to help make Jewish education affordable for as many young families that seek it for their children. Our mission, of course, flows directly from the belief that…

Readers of this space know that GAJE is planning a lawsuit to try to end the Government of Ontario’s funding discrimination against Jewish (and other) independent schools. In the year 2021, in a society that cherishes its democratic rights and…

More than in most weeks, many of us sanctified some of the hours in our lives this week in the remembrance of “things past” – specifically, Kristallnacht and Remembrance Day. In truth, of course, what we remember is never merely…

Some ten months ago, in January, Ontario’s Minister of Education, Stephen Lecce proudly announced: “To ensure our schools remain safe in January 2021 and beyond…We will do whatever it takes to ensure our kids can continue to learn.”  The minister…

Memorial commemorations were held across the Jewish world this week in tribute to the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks on the first anniversary of his passing Cheshvan 20. We would fail our consciences and be untrue to our belief in…

The CJN reported this week that “enrolment at Toronto’s non-Orthodox Jewish day schools has increased for a second consecutive year, reversing a 17-year decline.” Some 3,861 students are enrolled in kindergarten to Grade 8, in non-Orthodox day schools, an increase…

Like every week, we are reading deeply instructive portions in the Torah reading cycle. This is the time of year when our ancestors Avraham and Sarah effect a revolution in the way much of subsequent humanity would forever imagine the…