Rejoice!!! Ethan Schwartz, a biblical scholar at Harvard University, notes the following meaningful observation about the upcoming holiday – Simchat Torah. “The Torah reading for Simchat Torah (literally, “rejoicing of Torah”) includes, appropriately enough, one of the Torah’s most famous…

Teachers are our heroes Between the start of the school year and the commencement of the intense “Tishrei holidays,” the teachers in the community’s schools had less than one month to teach and in some cases to introduce the lessons…

Calling on the Federal Minister of Public Safety As GAJE members know, CIJA – The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs – some months ago launched a Task Force on Affordable Jewish Education. One of the key issues on the…

The greater the dream, the more spectacular the results The passing of Shimon Peres, alav hashalom, has been the powerfully reflective accompaniment to the closing of the Year 5776. He was one of the pre-eminent exemplars of that remarkable generation…

Tuition becoming more affordable at a New Jersey school Whereas our efforts at making Jewish education more affordable are focused on reimagining the funding of education, we occasionally draw members’ attention to successful efforts in the United States where efforts…

The moral and financial burdens The Tikvah Fund, a New York based philanthropic foundation and ideas institution undertakes various educational initiatives to support the intellectual, religious, and political leaders of the Jewish people and the Jewish State to advance Jewish…

Sage Advice Maggid Books of Jerusalem has recently published a new edition of Pirkei Avot entitled Sage Advice. It was translated and provides commentary by the renowned scholar, teacher Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg. We draw GAJE members’ attention to this…

The needs of Jewish tomorrow are urgent In the September 1 edition of The CJN, Pamela Medjuck Stein, a member of the paper’s board of directors, eloquently appeals to Jewish federations to “add a few percentage points to the Jewish…

Defining Educational Success In the book to which we referred last week, It’s Our Challenge: A Social Entrepreneurship Approach to Jewish Education, Dr. Jonathan Mirvis, dedicates an entire chapter to “How do we define educational success?” Mirvis writes: “The question…

It’s Our Challenge Dr. Jonathan Mirvis, a senior lecturer at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education has recently written a book that has the potential to be transformative for Jewish life. It is titled It’s Our Challenge: A Social Entrepreneurship…