As readers of this weekly update know, the Court of Appeal, in February, decided that GAJE’s case did not warrant proceeding in court to a full hearing on its merits. The Court agreed with the Government of Ontario that the issues raised in our application had already and definitively been decided in 1996 by the Supreme Court in the Adler case. It therefore threw out our application.

Intent on pursuing every legal avenue to obtain a full hearing for our case, GAJE recently filed an application comprising more than 100 pages, with the Supreme Court, for leave to appeal the decision by the Court of Appeal.

The following are a few short excerpts from the concluding sections of the application GAJE filed with the court. We wish supporters to know the nature and purpose of our plea.

•••

• “The Adler case was decided thirty years ago….While Adler was based on caselaw and legal principles that existed in 1996, the decision is no longer an accurate reflection of the changes in the law, the evolution of Charter values, and Canadian society at large. The social considerations animating the decision are no longer relevant. Notably, even the Adler court was sharply divided.

• In Adler, this Court was concerned about the historical compromise at Confederation between Upper and Lower Canada. A year later, Quebec then exited this compromise through a constitutional amendment, which became section 93A, such that Quebec would no longer fund its Protestant schools while Ontario continued its constitutional obligation to fund its Catholic schools.

• The Court in Adler was concerned about the impact of funding of public schools if funding was extended to Jewish day schools, however, the evidence demonstrates that in the provinces that now fund independent schools (Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Colombia), the public school systems remain healthy.

• …Since the Adler decision, the courts have recognized the duty of state neutrality and the principle of conformity with international law has been firmly entrenched. These concepts ought to inform and enlighten the interpretation of Ontario’s education funding obligations in order to end its discriminatory funding model.

• Section 93 of the Constitution Act does not need to be, and should not be, interpreted as the Adler court interpreted it. Section 93(3) allows for Ontario to make decisions in relation to the funding of other denominational schools. Thus, in light of the advancements resulting from s. 2 and 15 of the Charter, Ontario’s decision not to fund other schools ought to be subject to Charter scrutiny and yield to Charter challenge.

• This Court found … that the absence or failure to legislate can found a Charter breach. The Charter is offended not only by positive acts, but also by failure to act to address an inequality. Ontario is failing to address the inequality created by its refusal to extend funding to Jewish day schools equal to that extended to Roman Catholic schools. The proposed fresh evidence makes it clear that Jewish students are at risk in Ontario’s non-Jewish schools. Inequality of funding, combined with rampant antisemitism, results, as the Court of Appeal accepted, in real challenges to the long-term survival of the Jewish community. This result should not be blindly accepted solely because of discussions that were had between Upper and Lower Canada in 1867.

• As the majority explained in Adler at paragraph 48,

   One thing should, however, be made clear. The province remains free to exercise its plenary power with regard to education in whatever way it sees fit, subject to the restrictions relating to separate schools imposed by s.93(1). Section 93 grants to the province of Ontario the power to legislate with regard to public schools and separate schools. However, nothing in these reasons should be taken to mean that the province’s legislative power is limited to these two school systems. In other words, the province could, if it so chose, pass legislation extending funding to denominational schools other than Roman Catholic schools without infringing the rights guaranteed to Roman Catholic separate schools under s. 93(1). (Our emphasis)

• Considering the shift in societal values and the doctrine of state neutrality, and in light of the recognition by this Court … that a Charter breach can come from the absence of legislation, the continued failure of the Ontario government to provide funding for Jewish day schools equal to that of Roman Catholic schools, perpetuates a prima facie act of preference for one religious group over all others at a time when this should no longer be acceptable.

• The Application does not ask for sections 2(a) or 15 of the Charter to enlarge the protection in section 93 of the Constitution. Rather, it questions the continuation of an exclusive and historical discriminatory funding model from 1867, when it does not need to be interpreted this way in 2026. With today’s values, the funding scheme in the Education Act ought to be interpreted in light of the advancements in the law and society present today in order to end the discrimination in education funding perpetuated by Ontario.

• Several of the key issues raised in this Application were never raised nor decided upon by the Court. ….. in Adler, therefore, Adler cannot be an authority for those issues…

• It is submitted that it is important to the public of Ontario to consider whether section 93 should still operate as a sealed, impenetrable, locked iron door preventing even the most fundamental of Charterrights from applying to the people of Ontario. The reasoning set out in Adler is obsolete. The public interest demands that it be tested against the new reality.

•••

If the Supreme Court grants GAJE the right to appeal the decision of the Court of Appeal, our case stays alive. We are hopeful.

***

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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

April 24, 2026

In the mid-1970’s Jews in North America, across all generations, were vibrant, alive, seemingly electric with activism, purpose and conviction on behalf of the permanence and security of Jewish life wherever situate.

Jews around the world shuddered with fear in May 1967. That nearly eviscerating fright was evoked by the blood-curdling threats by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser and his fellow Arab League strongmen – all of whom were encouraged and supported by the Soviet Union – of slaughter, murder and destruction of the 19-year-old Jewish State of Israel. The fear we felt then was neither ill-founded nor exaggerated. The threats against the young State were unceasing. Each day Arab governments promised increasingly violent atrocity against the Jews of Israel. How could a population of 2.5 million Jews withstand an onslaught from the military forces of the 100 million people in Arab world?

But as we know, the tiny Jewish State, on June 5, 1967, pre-empted the onslaught and won what would become known as The Six Day War. In vanquishing the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and their confederates, Israel breathed drama, currency and modern relevance into the words of the Psalmist: “We shall not die; because we shall live!”

The near universal activism in the mid-1970s by Jews for the sake of other Jews, was in large measure an existential sigh of relief in response to the horrible feeling of vulnerability and imminent catastrophe that had swept through our hearts only a few short years prior. In a sense, it was a collective taking of responsibility one for the other.

In the words of Daniel Held, Chief Program Officer of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto that we published in this space last week, countless Jews in those days “stood tall and proud as Jews” in massive campaigns proclaiming everywhere to the world that henceforth, we will defend Jews, Jewish life, Jewish history, Jewish dignity and Truth itself.

During the mid-70s, the campaign in support of the struggle of Soviet Jews for their freedom typified the newly invigorated imperative of the collective taking of responsibility one for the other. Despite the long odds against the cause, communities of Jews across the world persevered. Non-Jews of conscience and good will joined in the effort. There was no giving up.

That same sense of a united, collective responsibility and purpose is much in need today as Jewish communities across the West confront the alarming growth in the manifestations of hatred of Jews and of Israel. The propagators of this newly rising, shameless hatred are deliberate about their intentions to wipe away from the Holy Texts and libraries of knowledge and scholarship, all evidence of a Jewish past and a Jewish present that stake a claim to the Land of Israel. But we must not let them.

In the coming days and weeks, Jews around the world will be celebrating three epochal events of the modern Jewish calendar:

On 4 Iyar, we commemorate Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day for the fallen of Israel).

On 5 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Israel’s Independence Day).

On 28 Iyar, we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (The reunification of Jerusalem [in 1967 after the Jordanian army had cleaved the Old City from the new city in 1948, expelled all Jews from the Jewish quarter of the Old City and destroyed every vestige of Jewish life there.]).

The propagators of antisemitism will do their utmost to bring our celebrations to ruin. Let us defy them. Let us ensure that we stand tall, proud and strong as Jews, against their plots.

As GAJE noted last year concerning this very subject, “each of us, in every generation, is a trustee for the Jewish wellbeing of our young children and guardians of the wider Jewish future. We accept and honour these responsibilities because it is right and important to do so and because our forebears did so for us. Even as we hope our children and their children will do so for the descendants that will follow them.”

It is the role of our system of formal and informal Jewish education to reinforce what our children learn at home and help foster the marvellous feeling of Jewish belonging and peoplehood into rock solid permanence through time immemorial. It is GAJE’s role to do our utmost to try to help make formal Jewish education affordable for all the families that seek it for their children.

•••

The spirit of the mid-70s is well captured by a stanza of a poem/song written by Robbie Solomon of the Jewish folk-rock musical group Safam. The song they sang was called Leaving Mother Russia. It became the rallying cry for the Soviet Jewry movement and even an anthem of sorts for Jewish activism and courage. The song helped inspire the energies of the movement. The movement ultimately succeeded.

“I send my song of hope

To those I left behind

I pray that they may know

The freedom that is mine

For in my darkest hour

Alone inside my cell

I kept the vision

Of my home in Yisrael.

My friends we know what silence brings,

Another Hitler waiting in the wings.

So, stand up now and shout it to the sky,

They may bring us to our knees but we’ll never die!…..

We are leaving Mother Russia……”

***

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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

April 17, 2026

The Jewish Education Project (JEP), based in New York, is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving Jewish education in every realm of the reach and purpose of education. The organization has a long history. It began over a century ago as the Board of Jewish Education serving the Jewish community in the New York City area. Some 15 years ago it was redesigned and recrafted as The Jewish Education Project.

JEP has a multi-pronged mission that – according to its website – entails providing professional development, educational resources, and encouraging and attempting to foster “bold thought leadership” to an education-focused clientele. In its own words, the Project “inspires, strengthens, and propels the Jewish educational ecosystem to deliver innovative, timely, and continually meaningful educational experiences—today and tomorrow.”

We mention the Project because, in the immediate aftermath of the terror incident at Temple Israel in Michigan last month, JEP’s chief executive officer, David Bryfman, spoke with Daniel Held, Chief Program Officer of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, for Held’s insights, both as educator and organizational officer, on the subject of appropriate communal and individual responses to the proliferating attempts to intimidate the Jewish community or worse.

Their conversation was instructive and at times, even inspiring. (It is available on the JEP website, entitled, Adapting the Future of Jewish Education: Responding to Violence: Raising Proud Children Today; March 17; Season 6, Episode 24)

Held tied the foiled attempt against the lives of the children at Temple Israel with the increasingly frequent incidents of vandalism and shootings at Jewish institutions in the GTA. His recurring message was a variation on the important theme of refusing to be intimidated, despite the worry, and at times even despite the fear. Held did not gainsay the difficulties for parents and professionals in calming fears and establishing proper security protocols. Nor did he deny the nature or the extent of the potential threats we face.

Time and again, he emphasized the need for individuals to hold “extra tight” to our families and to our Jewish identity. “We need to stand tall and proud as Jews,” Held said. “We each have a role to play in strengthening our community.”

Held’s call to stand tall and proud echoed a recent plea by Rabbi Marc D. Angel of New York who wrote, Rabbi Angel was appalled by the venom directed at the Jewish state, especially by other Jews. He outlined what he considered to be a code of sorts for appropriate Jewish responses to the treachery aimed at Israel.

“Each of us is an ambassador of our people; each of us represents the history, culture and traditions of the millennial Jewish experience; each of us is part of the Jewish destiny. To play our roles as proud and courageous Jews, we need to overcome inferiority complexes and reject ‘politically correct’ pressures; we need to stand tall and stand strong, with the wholeness of our being, on behalf of the God of Israel, the Torah of Israel and the People of Israel.”

As GAJE has pointed out in many of these weekly updates, the best, most enduring way for Jews to stand tall and proud as Jews, is to know what it truly means to be a Jew. We must know who we are and for what eternal and ethereal mission we have been purposed in order to stand as Jews. And to know this, requires education: Jewish education.

---

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
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
April 10, 2026

It’s for the children.

The Torah meticulously records the miraculous overturning of Nature and then – even before our ancient forebears began what turned out to be their 40-year march to the Promised Land – it instructs soon-to-be-freed slaves to impart the details of story of their liberation to their children.

“And when, in time to come, you children ask you, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to them: “It was with a mighty hand that the Lord brought us out from Egypt, the House of Bondage.” (Exodus 13:14)

And so, in the unfolding years, our Sages designed the Pesach Seder to try to bring what happened some 3,400 years ago in Egypt – the freeing of the Hebrew slaves from horrific slavery – to the vivid imaginations of our children. In all generations and for all times. Indeed, the word Haggadah, the Seder manual as it were, derives from the command v’higgadita, meaning to instruct or teach (our children).

The late remarkable, wise Rabbi Reuven Bulka of Ottawa succinctly described the essence and the purpose of the Seder. “The Seder is a pedagogic experience, in which the next generation is given a sense of history by the present adult generation…. We relive the past to become infused with an appreciation of our history, what made us what we are … to energize us to continue the traditions of the past into the future.”

The exodus from Egypt is the defining moment of our history. It is the foundation stone of our peoplehood. We recount the miraculous departure from ancient Egypt each day, every day, in our prayers and in many of our ritual practices. It was the beginning of the process that forged us into a people with a mission to help make the world the human being-focused, socially responsible and caring place that God intended it to be.

The children must be taught – lovingly, each according to his or her abilities – the story of that defining moment and its everlasting purpose. Because, after all, in their own turn, it will be in their hearts to hold precious, then teach, and ensure the transmission of the memory of that moment to their children. They must feel deeply and without distrust, that the 3.400-year-old story is their story too, a source of identity, generating pride, and embedding strength, that it is the invisible, binding thread connecting us all to each other through waves of unending time.

This feeling in our children for inter-generational connection, to carry and protect our story, was very much in evidence during TannenbaumCHAT’s music night two weeks ago. With flair and emotion and open-hearted embrace of being Jewish, the singers sang Make Them Hear You, from the musical Ragtime, written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Charles Flaherty. Of course, the song was not written as a paean to Jewish peoplehood, or as a rallying cry summoning Jewish courage. But, as we – parents and grandparents – listened to and watched the singers perform, our hearts soared with gratitude and tingling sensation. We excerpt parts of the song.

“Go out and tell our story  

Let it echo far and wide
Make them hear you
Make them hear you…

How justice was our battle
And how justice was denied
Make them hear you
Make them hear you….

Go out and tell our story to your daughters and your sons
Teach every child to raise his voice
And then my brothers, then

Will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men?
Make them hear you
When they hear you, I’ll be near you. Again”

***

An electric suggestion, if not foreshadowing, of Pesach’s Seder pulsed in the air as the children sang. It was an exciting and emotionally affecting restatement of the message of the Seder against the dark backdrop of Israel’s war with Iran, and the increasing menace to Jewish life even here in the GTA.

Pesach begins this evening. It’s for the children to be sure. But it is also for us. For all the generations gathered around the table.

***

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

Chag Pesach samayach

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

April 1, 2026

Mitchell Consky, the CJN’s education reporter, wrote a highly telling article documenting a rebounding interest, since the enrollment nadir wrought by Covid, in Jewish Sunday school education.

Consky gathers UJA data that shows part-time Jewish education, though moderately attended, has nearly doubled from its COVID low. He interviews parents of young families, reports on an impending new weekday after-school educational program and community officials to paint a portrait of the re-seeding and re-greening of a field of Jewish education and involvement that had fallen onto yield-less, fallow times.

Daniel Held, chief program officer with the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto described the current Jewish educational horizon in the GTA. “More and more people in our community are participating in Jewish education that’s right for them,” he said, referring to parallel growth in supplementary education enrollment and Hebrew day school enrollment.

Increased demand for supplementary education arises amid growing concerns about antisemitism in Ontario public schools. While day school growth stems from several factors, “including strong school performance during the pandemic, post-Oct. 7 concerns about antisemitism and new scholarship support.”

Thought the article is ostensibly about parents seeking more family appropriate Jewish education for their children, the truer, underlying message is one of more and more young families seeking the mutually sustaining strength and comfort that flow from finding meaningful ways of participating in a sense of peoplehood.

One Jewish parent in Toronto of two children ages 10 and 5, told Consky that enrolling her children in Sunday school, this year, was a deliberate response to a moment that felt unsettled.

“Given the geopolitical circumstances of the world, and just wanting to feel connected to people that make us feel safe, we felt that being a little bit more immersed in a Jewish community would be beneficial to them”, she said.

Another parent of Jewish children in public schools told Consky that she wanted her children to build friendships with other Jewish kids, understand their background and feel rooted in Jewish culture.

As Daniel Held pointed out, families are increasingly seeking and finding their own, unique pathways during these troubling times, because of these troubling times, to Jewish education. And the reason is plain. One of the parents succinctly expressed it. She wanted her family “to feel connected to people that make us feel safe.”

But it was not only for the feeling of heightened safety that she enrolled her children in weekend Jewish school. It was for the wider, more permanently lasting benefit to her children from learning and then knowing, that they are part of the Jewish community.

 The Consky article is available at https://thecjn.ca/news/sunday-schools-rebound-as-families-seek-jewish-community-on-their-own-terms/

•••

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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

March 27, 2026

Last week in this space, we wrote about the increasingly bold, dangerous encroachment of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias into the educational system of Ontario.

The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) recently decided to hire Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a fringe, anti-Israel lobby group, whose bellicose propaganda offends truth and history, to train the union’s executive about recognizing and dealing with antisemitism.

IJV is wholly unqualified for the task. Indeed, its inventory of beliefs actually inspire malice and hatred toward Israel. Were the near and far term implications of the union’s decision to employ IJV not so dire, the exercise by the union would be worthy of a Saturday Night Live, nonsensical, tongue-in-cheek parody. But alas, the union’s decision is not a parody. Nor are we able to merely change the channel to be rid of the menace of lies posing as facts. But, sadly, this menace and that of institutionalized antisemitism are now upon us.

By its embrace of IJV, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario showed its true intention to be part of the malign process of erasing Jewish history from the education of Ontario children.

One of the factually grotesque assertions by the IJV was that the use of the principles and definitions propagated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism.”

IJV’s reference to “anti-Palestine racism” (APR) was purposeful. APR is a full-blown, radical, anti-Israel, educational framework for use as a tool in all public schools from grades K-12 to assess the extent and teach values of tolerance and human rights.

The APR framework was written by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA). It springs from their report Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing, and Manifestations. The report defines anti-Palestinian racism in an outlandishly self-serving, open-ended manner, as “a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba [the founding of the State of Israel which they call the Catastrophe] and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.” To ensure that the definition is never ending and permanently open ended, the report expressly states that this is not an exhaustive list of how “anti-Palestinian racism” might manifest.

As if it were a sheer pane of glass, the purpose of inventing the doctrine of APR is glaringly transparent: to use as a sword to excise modern Jewish history out of the history books in the public schools of Ontario.

Some school boards, including the Toronto District School Board have already adopted the APR framework. But because the Government of Ontario recently placed the TDSB and some other school boards – for financial-related reasons – under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, the use of APR has been temporarily halted by those boards. The danger of its use, however, still exists, as there are other entry points into the curriculum for wielders of APR apart from those controlled by the Board itself, such as by parent committees.

A great deal has been written about the threat posed by the doctrine of APR to the public educational system, to the Jewish community and to democratic values. See for example, Mitchell Consky’s reporting in The CJN, articles in the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, and especially, a superb backgrounder on the subject by the North American Values Institute (NAVI).

Dr. Mika Hackner, the author of the NAVI study, refers to APR as an “emerging threat”. She urges Jewish communities and friends to “be on the lookout for this noxious framework and be prepared to oppose it head-on. The framework not only formally adopts a radical, one-sided anti-Israel understanding of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it treats any disagreement with the anti-Israel party line as inherently racist. And, given the penchant of radical education fads to spread from school system to school system, it is a real and present danger to Jewish communities in the diaspora.”

Dr. Hackner is right. We – proponents of civil society, democratic values, mutually respectful rules of intellectual engagement and a secure future for Jews here – must oppose APR head-on. There are at least three steps of opposition:

• Call it out for what it is: yet another attempted breach of the walls of truth, so vital to us.

• Oppose its infiltration into public school education.

• Raise Jewish children to know and cherish what it means to be part of the Jewish people.

The NAVI backgrounder is available at:

Click to access Backgrounder%20on%20Anti-Palestinian%20Racism%20in%20K-12%20Education.pdf

•••

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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

March 20, 2026

The nature and the extent of the intimidating, anti-Jewish atmosphere in Ontario’s public schools have been studied and well chronicled by experts. The most recent report on the subject was released last summer by Deborah Lyons, then Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.

Prof. Robert Brym, the author of the report commissioned by the Special Envoy, attested the following in court about his findings.

“In my view… antisemitism is widespread in Ontario’s K-12 public and Catholic schools, especially English public schools; the data demonstrate that school authorities have failed to address the problem in any meaningful way….. [T]he antisemitism faced by [Jewish] children in public schools has worsened substantially since 2000, with the most dramatic change being the period post-October 7, 2023. Based on the data, I characterize the situation as a crisis of antisemitism in which Jewish schoolchildren are being put at significant emotional and physical risk when attending non-Jewish publicly funded schools.”

Policy-makers in the Ministry of Education may be not be aware of the situation for Jewish children in Ontario’s public schools. Or perhaps they do not much care. But the Jewish community is indeed aware of and cares greatly about the situation. And we are very concerned.

Now, however, there is even more reason to be concerned for our children in the public schools.

An announcement last month by the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) may have flown beneath the radar for many members of our community. As reported in The CJN, the union, which represents some 83,000 members, has decided to undertake training for its executive in how to recognize and deal with antisemitism. The announcement might have earned accolades. It should have been greeted with kudos and commendations but it was unworthy. For, the trainers whom the ETFO appointed were unworthy of the assignment. ETFO chose Independent Jewish Voices (IJV). It is a fringe group, representative of very few individuals within the wide and eclectic Jewish community, and without any known record or experience as educators and consultants on the subject for which it has been hired.

And there is worse.  An argument can be reasonably made that IJV actually contributes to antisemitism.Iso Setel, a spokesperson for IJV, told The CJN that the IJV “take(s) antisemitism really seriously.” Setel attributed antisemitism to “this larger growth of the far right, of white supremacy, of authoritarian politics.” He absolved the haters of Jews on the far left of any responsibility for the spread of the hatred.

Worse still. Setel said IJV’s training addresses what the group views as the misidentification of antisemitism. He elaborated. “When political criticism of Israel and the ongoing genocide and occupation (our emphasis) is misrepresented that dilutes the meaning of antisemitism.”

The constant accusation by the IJC of “ongoing genocide” by Israel is an outright lie. It is a calumny of equal malignancy as the blood libels against Jews of medieval times. The frequency of its regurgitation generates and inspires the very hatred toward Jews that we thought had so bothered the ETFO to take steps to ostensibly deal with it.

And worse even more. With seeming, proud defiance, Setel told The CJN that IJV “firmly rejects the use of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which distorts the definition of antisemitism to conflate political criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism.”

Most readers of this update know that IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism has been adopted or endorsed by some 47 countries, including Canada. Setel’s description of the IHRA definition precisely fits the lies-as-truth propagations in the morally inverted world that IJV and like-minded haters of Israel inhabit.

The reference to “anti-Palestine racism” was a clever, but transparent shot across the bow of the ship carrying The CJN’s readers. It was intended to remind us that many people in Ontario’s educational teaching establishment hope to soon use “anti-Palestine racism” (APR), as an operational principle in establishing curriculum. In truth, it is an attempt by the haters of Israel to distort and then erase Jewish-Israeli history from the books and classrooms of our province. (More on this next week.) And yet this is the group that the ETFO hired to educate the union’s executive about antisemitism. The choice of IJV casts a revealing light on the ETFO’s true purpose.

Amir Epstein, executive director of Tafsik Organization, a Jewish advocacy group focused on combating antisemitism and defending Zionism, suggests what that purpose might be. “This is a calculated strategy … designed to legitimize hate. And it must be exposed and condemned without hesitation.”

GAJE agrees. We condemn the ETFO’s decision. And we are worried – again, and still -for our children in Ontario’s public schools.

•••

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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

March 13, 2026

It is a particularly weak, twisted mind and hate-heavy heart that uses firearms against a synagogue, a special place of prayer, learning and gathering. And yet, one or more such individuals did precisely that this week against Temple Emanu-El in Toronto, after congregants had departed the synagogue at the conclusion of their Purim celebration.

It may have been a fluke that worshipers had already gone home before the shots were fired. Or, the shooter(s) may have waited until the building was empty. It matters not. The gunfire at the place of Jewish worship was despicable and craven. As an attempt to intimidate, it failed. As an attempt to assert power over Jews, it failed. As an attempt to express solidarity with fellow haters of Jews and of Israel, it failed. But as another warning of danger to our civil society, it succeeded. For, those who train their weapons on Jews will, in time, train their weapons on other minorities and then, in further time, on the very institutions on which our way of life relies.

Unless, of course, the agencies and mechanisms of law enforcement step in to protect the human beings in our society and society itself, which is the haters true target.

This is not the first shooting by haters in Toronto, or in Canada for that matter, at a Jewish institution. But it does not fall upon Jews to end hatred of Jews. The hatred is illogical, founded upon age-old bigotries, almost disease-like, and vice-like in its grip upon the minds of the haters. Jews cannot convince the haters to stop hating.

Rather, it falls upon elected leaders and upon the stewards of the ubiquitous rules-respecting, human rights-affirming institutions of our democracy, to control and abate, if not eradicate, the manifestations of such hatred.

Columnist and public thinker Bret Stephens recently told an audience in New York in the 46th annual State of World Jewry address at the 92 Street Y, that Jewish community budgets are mostly wasted when spent on trying to cure society of antisemitism. Stephens was adamant that in the post-October 7 climate of fevered antisemitism, Jews fight antisemitism best by strengthening Jewish identity and thereby also strengthening Jewish communities.

According to a report by Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy, Stephens suggested that resources should go toward building more Jewish day schools across the country, among other Jewish identity-strengthening causes. His suggestion echoed one made by podcast host Dan Senor, who delivered last year’s State of World Jewry address, saying that the key to thriving American Jewry is “a recalibration in favor of our community’s needs,” with Jewish day schools and summer camps being some of the strongest contributors of a solid Jewish identity.  

“The proper defense against Jew hatred is not to prove the haters wrong by outdoing ourselves in feats of altruism, benevolence and achievement,” said Stephens. “It is to lean into our Jewishness as far as each of us can, irrespective of what anyone else thinks of it.” 

“He also called on American Jews to “be proud” of Israel. “This perpetual apology machine, which is the American Jew trying to stand up for the state of Israel, needs to end. We need to be proud.” 

The community cannot simply abandon the fight against antisemitism because in truth, it is a fight to preserve civil society. However, GAJE agrees with Stephens (and with Senor) that the community must help in raising more of our children to be Jewish and proud of it. Thankfully, community leaders in the GTA and indeed across Canada understand this in a way that still eludes many of their counterparts in the U.S.

Despite the more Jewish education-oriented approach of communities here, as we have seen since October 7, the haters still frequently shout their abuse on the streets, in malls and even in public schools. And alas, some of them still shoot their guns at Jewish institutions.

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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 (GAJE)

March 6, 2026

As readers of this weekly update know, GAJE will be seeking leave from the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal the ruling of the Ontario Court of Appeal that allowed our application to reassess the Adler decision by the Supreme Court in 1996 to be thrown out of court. Reassessing the Adler decision of 30 years ago is the first step in enabling GAJE to challenge Ontario’s discriminatory educational funding policy.

The Government of Ontario refuses even to have a discussion with GAJE about ending the unfair, unequal educational funding of Jewish and other minority children. And it is now apparent, that neither the Divisional Court nor the Court of Appeal is bothered by Ontario’s relentless, hard-nosed refusal to abolish the unequal treatment of non-Catholic minority school children. Alas.

If the Government of Ontario ever finds the political courage to talk about the appropriateness of its educational policies in the year 2026, most Education experts will advise them:

• that the policies are anachronistic;

• that the policies actually discourage the best educational results, and

• that funding independent schools – at least to some extent – is more financially efficient.

Last week, the Alberta-based Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy released a new study examining the financial impact of independent schools and home education programs.

The study was entitled More Choice, More Savings: How Educational Choice Saves Alberta Taxpayers Billions.

The authors of the study stated boldly-stated their conclusion: “Educational choice is saving Alberta taxpayers billions.”

The study analyzed per-student funding, enrolment trends, and capital implications across Alberta’s K–12 system. The evidence shows that independent and home education programs are not a burden on the public system—they are a fiscal benefit.

We reproduce some key points from the Foundation’s press release.

• Fully taxpayer-funded public, separate, and francophone schools cost taxpayers $11,225 per student. Independent schools cost $8,027, and home education costs $1,802.

• Each independent school student saves taxpayers 28 cents on the dollar compared to a fully- funded public school student. Each home-educated student saves 84 cents on the dollar.

• In 2024 alone, these savings totalled $306.4 million. Over the past five years, they add up to $1.35 billion.

• If independent and home-education students were absorbed into the public system, Alberta would require at least 54 additional public schools, at a capital cost exceeding $3 billion.

The authors added that the overwhelmingly middle-class families who choose these options do so for many reasons: supportive and safe environments, smaller class sizes and alignment with family values. Alberta’s education system is one of the most pluralistic in North America, offering 17 distinct approaches to schooling, 13 of which receive at least partial public funding. That diversity not only reflects market demand, it strengthens the system as a whole.

The study is available at:

More choice, more savings: How educational choice saves Alberta taxpayers billions

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GAJE shares this information because it offers relevant, up-to-date information regarding the funding of education in the year 2026 in Canada. In its broad framework, Alberta’s policy conforms with and confirms the funding practices of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec.

Ontario’s Minister of Education should be interested in this information. By at least partially funding independent schools, the province would:

• spend its tax-payer funds more wisely and more efficiently,

• improve province- wide educational outcomes,

• provide safer, more supportive learning environments for all children in the province,

• enable smaller class sizes in the public school system,

• foster education that more closely aligns with the true needs and values of the child’s family,

• provide education that more accurately reflects the cultural, denominational and special needs diversity of Ontario,

• strengthen the public school system, and

• abate, if not yet eliminate, the unequal, unfair, discriminatory treatment of non-Catholic, minority children.

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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 (GAJE)

February 27, 2026

Two weeks ago, the Ontario’s Court of Appeal (COA) upheld a ruling by the Divisional Court not to allow GAJE to proceed with our application for fairness in educational funding.

The COA had to decide whether GAJE had satisfied the test enabling the revisiting of a binding legal precedent. The Court articulated the test. It contains two parts: (i) A new legal issue is raised or new legal issues arise as a consequence of significant developments in the law; or (ii) There is a change in the circumstances or evidence that “fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate”. The test is disjunctive. The applicant need satisfy one, not both, of the two elements.

The COA, ruled that GAJE had failed to meet either of the two prongs of the test.

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In last week’s update, we commented upon the court’s finding regarding the second prong. The COA failed to see the post-“October 7” world for Jews and their children in Ontario, as “fundamentally shifting the parameters of the debate” about fairness in educational funding. In effect, the COA found that there was antisemitism in 1996 and that the antisemitism facing Jews since “October 7” is simply more of the same. The court did not grasp that Jews in Ontario in 1996 did not feel the worry and the disquiet that so many feel today. It did not grasp that the hostility to Jewish children in public schools, worsens considerably an already back-breaking burden for Jewish families regarding the Jewish education of their children.

•••

This week, we comment on the court’s reasoning regarding the first prong. GAJE had to show that a new legal issue was raised or new legal issues arose as a consequence of significant developments in the law. We shall only identify the legal developments and legal issues we raised. Space does not permit us to delve into the layered detail of each.

GAJE pointed to three new developments in the law after 1996, the year that the Adler precedent was decided. Two were judicial; one was statutory.

• The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has articulated a doctrine by which Canadian law must conform with international treaties to which Canada is a signatory.

• The SCC has developed the principle of State Neutrality by which the state is required to act in a manner that is respectful of every person’s freedom of conscience and religion. The state must neither favour nor hinder any particular religious belief. The state must show respect for all postures towards religion.

• Less than a year after the Adler case was decided, Quebec and Canada agreed that Quebec would opt out of the “historic agreement” with Ontario in 1867 in which both provinces promised to protect minority denominational educational rights in their respective provinces. This new arrangement for Quebec was enshrined as S.93A of Canada’s Constitution Act.

The COA adopted the reasoning of the Divisional Court rejecting Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou’s original findings that these legal developments as well as the new circumstances since 1996 warranted a fuller examination by the courts on the correctness of the Adler reasons in 2026.

“Developments in the law related to ss. 2(a) [Freedom of Conscience and Religion] and 15(1) [Equality Rights] of the Charter were irrelevant because Adler (the 1996 SCC decision) holds that Charter analysis is inapplicable in light of the unique constitutional protection afforded to Roman Catholic separate schools in Ontario under s. 93(1) of the Constitution Act, 1867.

“In terms of developments in international law (the presumption of conformity), the Divisional Court made two observations of note. First, Adler’s interpretation was rooted in Canadian history – in particular, the historical compromise made at Confederation – and did not leave room for the international instruments and other sources cited by the motion judge. Second, even if the presumption of conformity did constitute a development in the law, international principles cannot be used to invalidate Canadian constitutional provisions. If one part of Canada’s own Constitution cannot be used to invalidate another provision within the Constitution, there is no reasonable prospect that international sources could do so.”

“Finally, the Divisional Court held the addition of s. 93A (Enshrining Quebec’s leaving the 1867 agreement) had no reasonable prospect of meeting the Bedford/Carter test (for revisiting legal precedent) because it does not apply to Ontario and does not affect how s. 93 is to be interpreted in this province. 

•••

The test for revisiting a legal precedent requires, in part, the examination of new legal developments. The two SCC-developed presumption of conformity and doctrine of state neutrality arose after the Adler case was decided. Yet, the COA paid them no heed because they refused to depart from the legal reasoning that the historic agreement of 1867, as encapsulated in S. 93(1) of the Constitution, was legally impenetrable and could not be affected by post-1996 legal decisions.

The COA dismissed the legal or factual relevance of the fact Quebec abandoned the historical 1867 agreement with Ontario and Quebec shortly after the 1996 decision. The court reasoned that the S.93A constitutional amendment that enshrined Quebec’s departure from the 1867 compromise, had no legal bearing upon Ontario.

The ironies in the COA decision are many, ironic, and cruel.

• The purpose of the 1867 historical bargain between Ontario and Quebec was to ensure each province educationally protected their respective religious minorities. In 1997, Quebec found a more educationally modern way to protect its Protestant and other minorities. Ontario, on the other hand, relies upon the 1867 agreement to staunchly and unyieldingly maintain its unequal educational funding treatment of the minorities who have settled in the province since 1867.

• Of course, Ontario was not a party to the S.93A amendment. One might think, however, that the fact of the agreement’s abrogation by one of the original parties, would compel the court to consider whether the steadfast, unchanging application of the terms of the 1867 agreement by Ontario was still reasonable, let alone conscionable, in light of profound societal changes in the ensuing 159 years. Should the courts have no say in the refusal by Ontario to extend full Charter rights and freedoms to all the people in Ontario?

• GAJE has never sought to set aside or disable the operation of the funding rights under the S.93 historical agreement. Rather, GAJE has only ever sought to have the courts examine whether S.93 should continue to stymy the extension to non-Catholic denominational minorities, of the equality rights and fundamental freedoms in the Charter. There is no prohibition in S.93 preventing Ontario from funding, to some extent at least, non-Catholic denominational schools.

• The court ruled that S.93 is unassailable. Yet wasn’t the Bedford/Carter exercise explicitly created by the SCC to enable reconsideration of a decision’s continued unassailability? The SCC has long maintained that the Constitution is a “living tree”. It must be allowed to evolve to suit modern times and demands in accordance with the values and virtues that underpin it.

GAJE did not ask The COA to decide our application on the merits. We asked the court for the opportunity to have a full legal exploration on the correctness of the Adler decision today, 30 years after it was decided. Should the Adler ruling preventing equality and fundamental freedom for non-Catholic minorities in 1996 still stand as the law in 2026?

The COA would not grant GAJE this opportunity. Inequality and the denial of fundamental freedom still stand.

•••

GAJE has promised to continue the legal battle for fairness in educational funding until the very end. We have not reached the end. The next option is to seek leave from the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal the Court of Appeal’s decision. We harbour no illusions about the chances of success. But nor do we harbour any sense of “quit”. We have an obligation to our forebears, our children and our grandchildren. We also have an obligation to try to make Ontario society Charter-observant for all Ontario children.  

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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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

February 20, 2026