Winter is now fully upon us. Cold winds blow across the wide, climatic landscape of 2025, causing us to buckle up against the chill. They also blow cold societally, causing Jews in particular, to do the same against a chill that cuts far deeper.

This update is the last of 2025. If the word “positive” can be applied to increments of very small measures, then 2025 was, indeed, positive for the advancement of GAJE’s mission. But ours is still a work in progress.

In February, GAJE was granted leave to appeal the decision by the Divisional Court some four months earlier, that had accepted Ontario’s arguments against allowing our case to proceed and threw it out of court. On November 21, the Court of Appeal heard the appeal. We await the Court’s decision.

If our appeal succeeds, GAJE will have won the right to argue the merits of our case in court. It bears repeating that we launched our original application for fairness in Ontario’s educational funding in February 2022. In August of 2023, Judge Papageorgiou ruled that our case should proceed to a full hearing on its merits.

And so, we wait, and hope, for a good result from the Court of Appeal.

GAJE was founded in April of 2015. We are patient and we are determined to carry the flag of our cause high, proudly and with deep historical purpose. We will do so until there are no longer any reasonable legal avenues for GAJE to try to advance the cause. This is a promise by GAJE to the Jewish community: to all the generations of our people present, future and past too. To our children and grandchildren. And to our ancestors, whose ways, beliefs, heritage, traditions and love taught us that we must cherish and defend what is true and precious for all eternity: Jewish peoplehood.

•••

Last week’s update contained a short paragraph that was written by the New York-based educator and scholar, Mijal Bitton. It began: “And with that grief came a familiar fear…” However, due to a lack of attention, her authorship was not attributed. We apologize for the oversight. An author’s work must always be acknowledged.

•••

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.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Happy, healthy new year

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 26, 2025

The fact that Chanukah is an eight-day festival allows us, in this weekly “update”, to convey an additional holiday-related reflection to that in the update last week.

And because of the massacre at Bondi Beach, it is important not to let this opportunity pass without comment, without restating the obvious tie between the horrific Bondi event, Chanukah and the mission of Jews throughout the world, today, yesterday, tomorrow, always.

And with that grief came a familiar fear, one Jews have learned to recognize across generations: would Jewish life retreat, once again, into the shadows?

And yet, what followed was not retreat.

The editor of the Sapir Journal succinctly defined our – Jews – responsibility in responding to the craven cruelties of those who seek our harm.

“These hateful acts remind us that Jewish life across the planet has often been perilous, and that its continued survival is a miracle. Our responsibility as Jews is to keep lighting, night after night, no matter how dark the world gets.”

The second blessing of the lighting of the Chanukah candles is tightly-worded re-statement of the Sapir editorialist’s observation concerning the miracle of Jewish survival. We thank the Almighty “Who wrought miracles…. for our ancestors in those days, at this time.”

It is our duty to be ever thankful and to show gratitude for the remarkable inheritance and splendour of our Jewish lives. But it is also our duty to follow the instruction of our ancient Sages not to rely upon miracles.

Apart from the rare moments in Jewish history when the very rules of Nature were upended or suspended, as in the Exodus from Egypt, the “actual” miracles of Jewish life are the result of   human “partnership” with God. It is our behaviour, our action, our resolve – in step with the moral imperatives of ethical, purposeful life ordained by the God of our history, our present and our future – that are the true miracles of Jewish survival and history. The editor of the Sapir Journal prescribed the Jewish response to terror aimed at us is unabating Jewish presence. At Chanukah, that means to “keep lighting the candles”.

Some people might regard such a public, in-your-face response as adding to peril, as counter-intuitive. But counter-intuition has always been the Jewish message to those who are intent on harming Jews, on spreading their hatred for Judaism. And as Chanukah reminds us, Jews have never cowered from in-you-face manifestations of the few against the many. Our courage to do the counter-intuitive, indeed, our strength, flow from our peoplehood and the life-affirming values in which it has been nurtured and nourished from the very beginning.

GAJE’s mission is to try to bring as many children as possible – through affordable Jewish education – to the discovery of their unique, history-changing people and peoplehood.

•••

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.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Chanukah Samayach

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 19, 2025

As we have occasionally noted in this space, the various assaults against Jews and Jewish sensibilities since “October 7” have ignited new interest among many parents throughout North America to provide Jewish education for their children. At the same time, local educators, planners and philanthropists, have been seeking ways to accommodate the increased demand for spaces in their respective community day schools.

The latest story attesting to the ongoing buzz about the importance of Jewish education appeared on the eJP website this week. Entitled, Jewish Education is Too Important to Sit This One Out, the article ostensibly brings American readers’ attention to a new tax-related development there that has the potential to benefit parents wishing to enrol their children in day school. But the article’s underlying premise, and the reason GAJE points to it, is the incontrovertibility of the proposition that intense Jewish education is vital for helping raise knowledgeable, confident, proud Jews.

The article was co-written by three heads of school. At the center of the op-ed is the operative mission whose truth has been frequently and piercingly re-affirmed these past 26 months: “Jewish education is central to our identity, our resilience and our future.”

In these past two years of disgust and consternation with the odious behaviours aimed at Jews, it is very difficult to disagree with this proposition.

In just two days, on Sunday night, families will begin the paradigmatic, eight-day celebration of Jewish identity and resilience: Chanukah. And like all our holidays – but one – so much of its details and celebratory features are geared to capturing and holding the attention and the enjoyment of our children. Building in them positive memories.

Lighting candles on the Chanukah menorah; enjoying traditional, cooking oil-related and mostly deliciously indulgent foods that Jewish families have carried through millennia from Diasporah communities to the State of Israel; dreidling; and distributing chocolate coins to commemorate restored Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel wrought by the Maccabees some 2,200 years ago.

May the glow from the candles that Jewish families all over the world will light during this darkest time of the year (in the northern hemisphere) be an enduring metaphor reminding us of the evanescence of dark times, and more importantly, inspiring us to be the light.

•••

The article is available at:

Jewish education is too important to sit this one out

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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.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Chanukah Samayach

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 12, 2025

Adam Hummel is a thoughtful, articulate, bold firebrand on behalf of the Jewish people and just causes. He writes a regular column, Catch, on Substack. We have occasionally brought his ideas to the attention of readers of this weekly update. Today we do so again.

Earlier this week, Hummel published an essay aimed at rallying urgent community action to what he describes as an unfolding crisis for young Jewish parents in Toronto: the insufficient supply of spaces in day school for the increasing demand by Jewish parents.

The article is entitled We Can’t Turn Jewish Kids Away.

“Families are choosing Jewish education in numbers we have not seen in decades,” Hummel writes. “Parents who once wavered are now decisive. People who never imagined day school are walking in and asking how soon they can start. The demand is real, and it is inspiring. Unfortunately, many are now being placed on wait lists.”

Hummel elaborates. “…October 7 happened, and the outside community’s relationship with Jewish identity, Jewish safety, and Jewish continuity changed literally overnight. The toxicity in the public-school boards showed parents and students what their teachers and colleagues really thought. Maybe day school could, now be, an option? Our day schools rose to the occasion. 

Suddenly, the limiting factor wasn’t tuition. It was physical room.”

“[T]his moment is not a blip,” he writes. “It is not a fad. It is not a panicked reaction. It is an awakening. Jewish parents are choosing Jewish schools because the case for Jewish education has never been stronger, never been clearer, and never been more empirically supported.”

Hummel accuses no-one for the apparent shortage in classrooms. Indeed, he praises the community decision makers and institutions for responding as quickly as possible to the unforeseen surg born of unprecedented menace to Jews around the world.

“Federation, board members, donors, and school administrators have all been scrambling to assess the scale of this moment and determine what is needed not just now, but ten and fifteen years from now. They are trying to ensure that new builds are adaptable, flexible, and sustainable, especially given past closures, relocations, and the understandable nervousness that comes with committing tens of millions of dollars to long-term infrastructure.”

Hummel pleads with us to “think big” and tells us what he means by “big”.

“This…is an emergency. It is one grounded in hope though, rather than fear. Perhaps, that distinction motivates something different in our subconscious or desire to reach for our wallets and chequebooks, but if ever there was a moment that called for bold investment, it is now. 

“This is not a Jewish guilt trip. This is an invitation to take part in something generational. …The moment demands … a communal mindset that sees Jewish education not as a personal project, but as a collective responsibility. Every Jewish child deserves a seat,”

GAJE agrees with Hummel.

Indeed, so does the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and its educational umbrella infrastructure. New classes were opened last year in some schools and in some synagogues to accommodate increased demand for places. There are undoubtedly plans for more in the months to come.

Hummel urges that the response to these difficult times should be far-seeing, building for all tomorrows the truest infrastructure for permanent, proud Jewish life: a comprehensive educational system.

“No child should be denied a Jewish education” has been the guiding mission of UJA Federation and its predecessor organizations from the very first day, more than a century ago, when Jewish men and women banded together to create the core planning and sustaining structures of our community life.

The late educator, historian Michael Brown would remind his students that the future has not yet been written. It falls to us in the present, each day, every day, as we are able, to take up the metaphorical pen and write the future as we must, in partnership with Heaven, to help ensure the perpetuity of our people that has always been our belief. 

Hummel calls us to act in the single most effective way to enable us to affirm our peoplehood against those who strive to erase it. We must raise Jews.

•••

Hummel’s op-ed can be read at:

https://catchjcp.substack.com/p/we-cant-turn-jewish-kids-away?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1033775&post_id=180042701&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=rvbar&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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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 doing so.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 5, 2025

Last week, the Court of Appeal heard GAJE’s appeal of the September 2024 decision of the Divisional Court that threw our case out of court, reversing the decision of Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou the year before in August 2023, that had determined our application should proceed to a full hearing on its merits.

The Court of Appeal consisted of three judges: Eileen Gillesse, Sarah Pepall and Lois Roberts. The judges were engaged throughout the hearing, asking clarifying questions of both sides.

Our legal team – Jillian Siskind and Lawrence Greenspon – was superb. They established an excellent rapport with the judges from the very outset, speaking confidently in command of the material and respectfully in responding to the judges’ questions.

Our lawyers divided their arguments into two parts. The first was more overarching, explaining the full theory and legal basis of our appeal and emphasizing that GAJE was not seeking a ruling at this time on the merits of our request to have the Adler decision of 1996 reassessed. The team meticulously explained that the material they had filed and on which they presented argument was intended to show that there were sufficient legal and societal developments since Adler was decided, nearly 30 years ago, to trigger the test that would warrant sending our application to a hearing on the merits. The team emphasized the principle that the Constitution of Canada is a “living tree” that must not be frozen in time.

The second part of the GAJE presentation presented the legal developments and the societal changes since 1996. These post-1996 developments were instrumental, our lawyers stated, in justifying a new examination by the courts at how the Charter of Rights and Freedoms might be applied to them in 2025. Indeed, in her decision of 2023, Judge Papageorgiou did precisely that. She gathered into one basket, all of the new legal and societal developments since 1996 and determined their cumulative impact did warrant a fresh look at the constitutional issues that GAJE had brought for adjudication.

In response to GAJE’s arguments, the government lawyers made the very same arguments that they have since the very beginning, although last week a bit more volubly. The Adler case has decided the matter, they proclaimed. There is nothing new in our application, they maintained. The GAJE material, they said, provides no new evidence that “fundamentally changes the parameters of the legal debate.” He emphasized the word “fundamentally” as the key requirement of the legal principle that must be satisfied to trigger the application of the rule allowing a hearing to argue for the reassessment of the 1996 decision. At one point in response to a question from one of the judges, the government summarized his view of our case in starkly absolute terms: “Zero plus zero plus zero equals zero.” 

GAJE’s legal team was powerful in reply to the government’s arguments. They held the attention of the three judges and continued to steer them to reflecting upon the context of the original 1867 “historical compromise” that resulted in the S. 30 enshrinement in the Constitution of Canada of the mutual minority protections – by means of the respective educational systems – in Quebec and Ontario at that time. The team urged the judges to view the S. 30 protection for what it was intended to achieve then, and how those circumstances some 150 years ago, should not prevent the application of the equality and freedom of religion provisions of the Charter from being applied in educational matters today. This is especially so because reconsidering the application of our Charter rights today, some 30 years after Adler, would not negatively affect the Catholic community in Ontario.

The Court reserved its decision. Once it is handed down, GAJE will share it at our first opportunity. If the ruling is positive, GAJE gains the opportunity to present our full case, at long last. Let us hope.

GAJE is very proud of and grateful to our legal team.

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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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 doing so.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 28, 2025

When this update is posted today online or arrives in readers’ email inboxes, GAJE’s legal team will be in the Court of Appeal attempting to convince the court to allow GAJE to proceed with our application.

Our lawyers, Jillian Siskind and Lawrence Greenspon, are superb. They have submitted a factum (compendium of legal argument) of some 38 pages, the gist of which pleads with the appellate judges to rule that the Divisional Court was wrong in September 2024 to have reversed Judge Papageorgiou’s decision in August 2023, that had allowed our case to proceed.

At every turn, the Province of Ontario has been determined to prevent a hearing of our application on its merits. This has been the government’s approach from the very outset – rather than seek a solution that in the year 2025 provides the substantively best educational program for Ontario, while at the same time, conforming to, upholding, and protecting Canada’s Charter-enshrined values of equality before the law and the right to practice one’s freedom of religion.

Queen’s Park clings to its anachronistic, unjust educational funding policies by saying it is bound by the “historical compromise” of 1867 through which the then newly confederating provinces of Quebec and Ontario solemnly promised to protect the English and French language minorities in their respective provinces. That compromise was written into the Constitution of Canada. It remains there today.

In 1996, a majority of the Supreme Court ruled (in the Adler case) the section of the Constitution which codified the historic compromise (S.93) could not be invalidated by virtue of Ontario’s discriminatory funding.

GAJE does not ask, nor has it ever asked, that the funding of Catholic education be stopped or curtailed. GAJE’s original application asks the court to compel Ontario to treat its diverse religious communities equally. There has never been a provision in the Constitution that prohibits Queen’s Park from funding all denominational or other accredited independent schools fairly or at least to some extent – like the five next largest provinces do.

But Ontario will not be moved from its discriminatory educational funding.

The stinging irony of Ontario’s unyielding policy is that the solemn promise of 1867, on which it relies to maintain its discrimination, was cast aside by Quebec, the other signing party, nearly three decades ago. In 1997, the legal language enshrining the 1867 mutual commitment, was amended. Quebec no longer wished to be tied to a compromise its forebears agreed to 1867 but that clearly no longer reflected the educational needs of the realities of Quebec society in the late 20^th century. The amendment in 1997 allowed Quebec to be released from the requirements it signed in 1867, as codified in section 93.

GAJE’s request of the Court of Appeal is straightforward. It is, in the words of Judge Papageorgiou, to consider our plea to be “one of those rare cases where the parties should be permitted to develop a full record so that a… judge can then determine whether it is appropriate to revisit the issues decided in Adler…”.

It is important to point out that GAJE launched its case long before October 7, 2023. Our lawsuit was always about bringing an end to unfairness and injustice in the provincial government’s educational funding. But today, it is also about much more.

A malign force struck at the sovereign Jewish State on “October 7”. That force thought they were the first phase of an unfolding, expanding assault that it hoped would bring about the Jewish State’s annihilation. The very next day, even before the IDF organized its full defense of the people of Israel, the same malign force and its allies, appeared from their dark places throughout the democratic world, including here in Ontario and in Canada, to strike at Jewish life.

In addition to remedying injustice, GAJE’s case is thus also about encouraging Jews and strengthening Jewish life. This is our generation’s fight that we wage for the everlasting wellbeing of our community and for the democracy we cherish.

•••

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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 doing so.

•••

Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 21, 2025

World Jewish Congress President, Ronald Lauder, this week offered a two-pronged approach to standing up to and responding to the rising tide of antisemitism. He told some 250 attendees of the World Jewish Congress’ annual gala dinner in New York that the “only” way to respond to antisemitism is by “creating more Jewish schools” and by “taking the high ground in public relations.” 

The veteran philanthropist and champion for the Jewish people – wherever we reside – is well-experienced and well-qualified to offer this prescription. For most of his adult life, Lauder has traveled the world to ensure Jews experience the uniquely sustaining sense of connectedness that comes with being part of the ancient-modern Jewish people. 

Thus, when Lauder says, with crystal clear clarity, that reinvesting in Jewish Education and making it widely accessible to Jewish families is the only answer to fighting antisemitism, we ought to listen to him. And we do.

(Lauder also coupled strengthening Jewish education with revamping and rethinking public relations on behalf of Israel’s cause as the second prong of battle against antisemitism. GAJE offers no comment on Lauder’s statement concerning improved public relations.)

But we do, emphatically, agree with Lauder when he identifies Jewish education as a critically vital, foundational component to confronting antisemitism. Jewish education is the existential ethereal bridge for our young people to walk, over the course of their formative years, to help them become knowledgeable, confident, assertive Jews. Helping as many families as possible to step onto that bridge, and to find their steps with love and pride, is and has been GAJE’s mission since our inaugural year in 2015.

In furtherance of our mission…. GAJE’s legal team will appear before the Court of Appeal next week, November 21, 2025 at 10:00, to argue that the Divisional Court was wrong, in September 2024, to reverse Judge Papageorgiou’s decision of August 2023 that had allowed our case to proceed.

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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 doing so.

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Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 14, 2025

Joanna DeJong VanHof, education director with Cardus, a non-partisan, faith-based, think tank with offices in Hamilton and Ottawa, whose expertise and resources GAJE has often relied upon, was recently asked by National Post reporter, Donna Kennedy-Glans, to comment on the recently concluded public teachers strike in Alberta.

VanHof studies various approaches to independent education. She focuses on ways to ensure accountability within the alternative education systems. As a result, she is uniquely qualified to comment on the demand of the Alberta teachers to cut or eliminate funds for independent private schools. Not surprisingly, the teachers contend that money spent on independent schools is always to the detriment of public schools. Funding is a zero-sum exercise, they contend.

The teachers’ argument, however, is not sound. Expenditures are not necessarily zero-sum. But they are necessarily, always a reflection of policy priorities, choices, decisions, which are themselves, a reflection of a government’s governing philosophy and objectives.  

This is at the heart of VanHof’s response to the teachers’ approach. She contends that continually advocating the same approach to providing educational solutions, is “a failure of imagination not to see how we can do education better.”

She points out that support for more parental choice in education is burgeoning across Canada. Educational choice is no longer simply a “conservative value”. Indeed, all the western provinces and Quebec fund independent schools to some degree in pursuit of the policy objective of achieving the best educational system for their respective provinces.

“Parents do want options,” VanHof concludes. “Even in Ontario, where there is no funding provided for independent (private) schools, the appetite for alternative educational options continues to grow. The number of independent (private) schools that exist in the province also continues to grow. Parents are finding ways to access those when they feel they need them, despite very formidable barriers.”

According to experts like VanHof, the key question of the educational funding debate should be how to best meet the educational needs of all or most families and to try to meet them as the best learning fit for the children of those families.

The Post story emphasizes that “the wider cultural narrative we’ve adopted around education in Canada — the zero-sum, public vs. private education debate — hasn’t been that helpful. Joanna (VanHof) laments. “It’s a kind of circle that we can’t get out of,” she says; it’s a difficult cultural narrative to displace.”

VanHof proposes to reframe the conversation to ask: “What is education ultimately for? What is its purpose? Why do we do it?”  She answers her own questions thus: “Education should be about the formation of humans, about flourishing, and in order to achieve that in a diverse country like Canada, that means having educational options for families.”

GAJE shares VanHof’s view of the purpose of education. We would hope most Ontarians do as well. Studies – and experience – have proven that implementing such an educational vision is not to the detriment of the public school system. In addition, we must not ignore the deeply felt educational funding wound that cannot heal under present circumstances in Ontario: The government funds the education of one religious community only to the exclusion of all others. This is simply unfair and, in the year 2025, an affront to conscience. It should also be an affront to the law.

•••

The National Post article can be read at:

https://nationalpost.com/news/alberta-teachers-strike-reveals-need-for-education-revolution?utm_campaign=Cardus%20Snapshot%202024&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9acyDeuePMM5er_beuzoDFaHpX8c19YC8-SKbNL1lJnIyKB91WiiFKMp5AnOCsnVRxD3EKEGLsDp60zRg3PhQDnG-sSw&_hsmi=387476739&utm_content=387476739&utm_source=hs_email

•••

GAJE’s legal team will appear before the Court of Appeal in two weeks, November 21, 2025 at 10:00, to argue that the Divisional Court was wrong, in September 2024, to reverse Judge Papageorgiou’s decision of August 2023 that had allowed our case to proceed.

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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

•••

Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 7, 2025

Eszter Neuman, the chair of the school board of Sinai Akiba Academy in Los Angeles, has written a rhapsodic tribute to successful day school education.

“We’ll always have day school” was published this week by eJP. Neuman explores the connection between deeply rooted personal memory (nostalgia) and Jewish literacy (fluency). Through the passageway of her own life, Neuman shows the inter-lacing of both. Each drives the other in a life-affirming recurring, strengthening loop of peoplehood and purpose.

Neuman was inspired to write the article after she heard renowned political thinker and scholar, Dan Senor’s, comments about Jewish day schools, namely that they are vital for building “Jewish muscle memory” and creating a strong sense of Jewish community and pride.

There is no information in the article that the author is an educator. This is one of the refreshing aspects of Neuman’s op-ed. She writes as a parent of day school children and as a child of parents who emigrated from Eastern Europe, who could only dream of, but not actually provide, their daughter the opportunity of an intense Jewish education.

She writes about hope and aspiration. She offers no certainties. Moreover, the article did not stem from the ever-worrying proliferation of street-ugly antisemitism. Rather, Neuman lovingly expresses the hope that her children will ultimately embrace Judaism for the enveloping beauty of the life it can bring and the purpose it can provide – for their own sakes.

We provide two excerpts from Neuman’s op-ed. They are illustrative of the effective way in which she is able to speak in the same voice to her children – the future – as well as to her parents/ancestors (the past).

•••

“I want to watch my daughter and two sons experience all these things in the present and I hope and pray that one day, they will be able to tap into their own memories and feel the same sense of joy and comfort I do when I recall my memories; but I also want my children to have a level of Jewish muscle memory that far exceeds what I have because I did not attend a Jewish day school…..I want my children to have Jewish knowledge that will arm them on their journey to becoming strong, resilient and proud Jewish adults. I want them to develop the sort of intellect that supports them and gives them identity and confidence in adulthood no matter where they end up in life or in the world.”

“A few weeks before my dad passed away, he asked me a question about what I valued inlife. It was a little heavy, but since I knew time was short and that he knew innately about all the things I could easily list off, I decided to share something I probably hadn’t even yet concretely formulated for myself. I told him — and am now very comforted knowing that he was able to hear it before he passed — that I wanted my children to have strong Jewish identities, to really know and understand their Judaism, to feel committed to their traditions and to have a sense of belonging but also obligation to their community; and that I wanted to feel that way more as well….”.

•••

We recommend the article because. in soft-spoken terms. it depicts the hard truths of parents knowing they cannot write, let alone enforce, the blueprint of their children’s lives. But guidance is born of hope and wrapped in love. With an understanding heart, and the forgiveness that flows from having worn so many years, that is sometimes the most that parents can provide.

The article is available at:

‘We’ll always have day school’: The relationship between Jewish nostalgia and Jewish fluency

•••

GAJE’s legal team will appear before the Court of Appeal at 10:00 on November 21, 2025 to argue that the Divisional Court was wrong, in September 2024, to reverse Judge Papageorgiou’s decision of August 2023 that had allowed our case to proceed.

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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

•••

Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

October 31, 2025

It is very satisfying as well as a public service to bring news of increasing enrollments at Jewish schools across the country.

Thus, we bring to readers’ attention an article that appeared recently in the Winnipeg Jewish Post and News reporting that Gray Academy, one of the only JK-12 Jewish day schools in Canada, has experienced a leap in enrollment. Lori Binder, Head of School and CEO of the Winnipeg Board of Jewish Education, advised that this year’s enrolment of 517 students is the highest back-to-school enrolment number since 2013-2014. 

The article noted that students at the school speak of “feeling safe and being able to connect with their roots.”

Reluctantly, but nevertheless truthfully, we must observe that it is only in the past two years or so, that “feeling safe” has become an oft-stated reasons by parents for choosing to place their children in day school. No one is surprised to read this. There have been many reports in the past two years especially of Jewish children being bullied, harassed and otherwise singled out for harsh treatment in public schools, for example in Toronto, Ottawa and Brampton, Indeed, the federal government released a study in the summer confirming that antisemitism was rampant in the public school system in parts of Ontario. 

To be sure, seeking a safe environment for their children is not the only reason Jewish parents are sending their children to day school. As the Post and News story also noted, day school education helps children “connect with their roots.”  As it relates to Judaism, “connecting with one’s roots” is an inter-woven, hyper strong basket that holds the many enrichening, eye-opening, revolutionary, heartening and deeply moving components of Jewish peoplehood.

In explaining the school’s efforts to attract and hold onto its students, Binder emphasized that the school has a strong focus on affordability.  “It is very important to us that no child is turned away because a family can’t afford to pay,”she says. In those very words, Binder restated the ruling ethos and pre-eminent mission of the Jewish day school system in Greater Toronto from the very first days, in the last century, when families brought their children to the burgeoning Jewish schools in their respective neighbourhoods. In truth, Binder’s words should be the ruling ethos wherever there are Jewish schools to which parents wish to bring their children.
 
Binder also explained how it might be easier in Manitoba than, say, in Ontario not to turn any family away because of a lack of sufficient funds. For, the Province of Manitoba funds independent schools, such as Gray Academy, with approximately 50% of comparable funding per children in public schools. 

The Academy offers additional funding to the requesting families through a bursary assistance program. Binder proudly made the point by restating the historic imperative of all Jewish schools, everywhere on earth, not only because of the events of the past two years, but because such has been the uniquely defining aspect of the Jewish people since our first days receiving instruction from Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai.  

“We work with every family to ensure that no child is ever turned away because of inability to cover the full parental contribution,” Binder said.

If GAJE wins its lawsuit against the Government of Ontario, the day will arrive when Jewish schools here will be able to say definitively and with a grateful sense of having joined hands with all generations of educators, parents, scholars, children, prophets and all of the Jewish people that “no child has been turned away because of the financial inability of his or her parents.”

May it be His will.

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GAJE’s legal team will appear before the Court of Appeal at 10:00 on November 21, 2025 to argue that the Divisional Court was wrong, in September 2024, to reverse Judge Papageorgiou’s decision of August 2023 that had allowed our case to proceed.

If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, 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

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Shabbat shalom

Am Yisrael Chai

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

October 24, 2025