From the end of summer days in early September to the beginning of summer days in late June, our youngsters and their teachers have engaged in what the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called “the passion of study and the life of the mind.”

To be sure, most of our students might not define their almost 10-month occupation in learning-how-to-read, learning-how-to-count, learning-how-to-think, books, homework, school projects, pressures and pleasures, as Rabbi Sacks did. Indeed, teachers too, might find different words to describe the responsibilities they fulfilled each day toward their young charges and their colleagues. But in broad collective sum, across the millennial span of time and varied geographies, Rabbi Sacks was perfect in his depiction of the stretched-out activity that teachers and their students have just completed for academic 2025/2026 (5785/5786).

Attending school each day for some 10 months – whether as students or as teachers – is not easy. In fact, it is often a grind. And so, GAJE congratulates our students and thanks their teachers and their support staff in bringing education to our children.

In equal fact, we need to also acknowledge – as we have before – that these past three years, have shone an enhanced light on the urgency of the need for Jewish education.

Jewish education, more than ever, is “a steel-hard, uncompromising response to the aggression against Jewish communities around the world. Families that send their children to Jewish school affirm, with the clear-eyed resolve of the ancient Hebrew prophets, the inviolability of our promise to our forebears and to God, that we will live Jewish lives.”

Our gratitude to those who engage in the enterprise of Jewish education is thus sharper and deserves to be expressed without hesitation, in the hope that our children, in time, will choose the same for their children.

In the GAJE update of the last Friday of the school year, we have often reproduced the following definitive characterization by Rabbi Sacks coupling the Jewish people with life-long education. We do so again. It is that important.

“For Jews, education is not just what we know. It’s who we are. No people ever cared for education more. Our ancestors were the first to make education a religious command, and the first to create a compulsory universal system of schooling – eighteen centuries before Britain… the Egyptians built pyramids, the Greeks built temples, and the Romans built amphitheaters, Jews built schools. They knew that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. So, Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of the mind.”

To all of our students: Congratulations. Well done.

To their teachers and “helpers’ at all levels: You are our heroes.

Thank you, all, very much.
•••

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
June 26, 2026

After this update was written, on June 16, Kaelen Sherman, the daughter of the late Honey and Barry Sherman, announced the donation of $25 million to TanenbaumCHAT for the creation of the Honey and Barry Sherman Education Foundation. Speaking to a large audience at the Beth Tzedec attending the school’s 2026 graduation ceremony for the Class of 2026/5786, Sherman said the gift was intended to honour her late parents’ appreciation and support for Jewish education. It will help to ensure that every family that wants a Jewish education for its child, will be able to afford one. The terms and conditions for the gift were not announced.

How praiseworthy and inspiring the generosity of Kaelen Sherman. She clearly understands the urgency and the resulting needs of this moment in Jewish history.

•••

‘Immersive Jewish education not a luxury, but a necessity’

Since “October 7”, the pathways of our children’s lives as Jews, are fraught in ways that we – their parents and grandparents – never thought we would ever see or experience in our own communities in our showcase societies of western democracy. Until we restore those pathways, we must enable them to trod confidently wherever they choose to find their paths in life.

Thus, as the school year winds down, we bring another op-ed to the attention of our readers on the indispensability of Jewish education in helping our children become – as Jews – self-confident, self-identifying, informed, knowledgeable and proud.

Earlier this month, eJP published the remarks delivered in March to a conference on the future of American Jewry, by Mike Leven, chair of the board of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy, and founder of the Jewish Future Promise. The op-ed was entitled, somewhat bluntly, “We already know how to strengthen Jewish continuity. So why aren’t we doing it?”

Apart from the American context, which is the starting vantage point, his observations apply wherever in the Diaspora, that Jews reside. GAJE followers will likely understand and share the key points that Leven emphasized. Nevertheless, we give his ideas and insights further life, because they are indeed, so very important to the needs of the “hour” in which we now live.

Leven sets his course at the outset of the essay.

“For decades, the American Jewish community has debated the future of Jewish continuity. We have invested in advocacy, Israel experiences, leadership development, synagogues, camps, Hillels, security initiatives and countless other worthy causes.

“Yet after the Oct. 7 attacks and the wave of antisemitism that followed, we were forced to face a hard truth: Too many young Jews are stepping onto college campuses unprepared — not just to defend Israel or Jewish identity, but to even understand them in any real, lasting way.

“Many cannot explain Zionism beyond a handful of slogans. They do not know the story of modern Israel, the pioneers who built it or the generations who struggled to keep it alive. Some have never heard the names Chaim Weizmann or Ze’ev Jabotinsky, let alone the larger story that led to the birth of the Jewish state.

“This is not a failure of our young people; it is a failure of our own making. We cannot expect young Jews to defend an identity they were never truly given the chance to understand.

“The truth is that we already know one of the strongest tools for building lifelong Jewish identity, literacy, confidence and continuity: Jewish day school education.”

After citing data on the extent of enrollment in the USA in Jewish day schools, and providing further cultural, sociological observations about Jewish education there, Leven states categorically: “[I]mmersive Jewish education is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

He calls for “more scalable” models of day school education that are affordable and efficient that are emerging “to meet the moment we are now facing.” He even provides examples of such models. (See the full article.)

Leven imparts am unambiguous message. His audience comprises the families looking for some way to enroll their children in day school and community policy planners and philanthropic leaders who need no convincing of the correctness of his views or that the task is indeed, imperative. 

“Jewish day schools are no longer simply an educational alternative. For many families, they are becoming a communal necessity. The question is no longer if Jewish philanthropy will act, but when. The urgency of this moment demands a unified, immediate commitment to expanding day school access. Our children and our future cannot wait…. After Oct. 7, the choice is clear: act boldly to expand Jewish education now, or risk losing the next generation.”

The article is available at: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/we-already-know-how-to-strengthen-jewish-continuity-so-why-arent-we-doing-it/

•••

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

June 19, 2026

The school year is winding down.

Our children suppress no smiles anticipating their summer vacation. Nor do their teachers, principals, and administrators. They all share the same smile.

Students of pedagogy, academics and teaching instructors, however, have compiled their observations, gathered their thoughts and composed their reflections on the year that has arrived at its summertime conclusion.

We bring the highlights of one such reflection published this week by David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project, the successor organization to the legendary Bureau of Jewish Education on the Lower East Side of New York that was founded over a century ago.

“How to build a future that is wiser than our present” was published by eJewishPhilanthropy. It is an abridged version of a major address by Bryfman on June 8, 2026.

After surveying the horizon of the past year’s community concerns, Bryfman delivers a straightforward message: Education matters more than ever.

Bryfman’s message will notsurprise Jewish education policy planners in our community, education professionals, parents whose children attend Jewish school, or readers of this weekly update. Since “October 7”, Jews throughout the Diaspora have faced a different, more hostile world. Jewish education instills, in us, the confidence and strength we need to confront and even thrive in our new, present reality.

Bryfman explains how he arrives at his conclusion. His reasons might surprise. We reproduce only a very short excerpt of remarks.

“This [post-October 7] moment demands that we reclaim and recharge Jewish education. 

Yes, antisemitism is rising. Yes, Israel is under scrutiny and attack. Yes, our young people are navigating a world that is more polarized, more complicated and more emotionally exhausting than many of us have ever known.

“But I told my staff something very important in the weeks and months after Oct. 7, 2023: For some people, motivation will come from fighting antisemitism; for others, motivation will come from defending Israel; but we, as educators, must always lead with joy and pride…

“One of the things that worries me most right now is not what is happening outside the Jewish community. It is what is happening inside it. The name-calling. The purity tests. The obsession with deciding who is in and who should be out. The inability to disagree without dehumanizing.

With all the external pressures facing the Jewish people, what I fear most is that we may tear each other apart from within. 

“That is why education matters more than ever.”

(The article is available at: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-to-build-a-future-that-is-wiser-than-our-present/)

•••

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

June 12, 2026

In prime tv time this week, from the chapel of the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Prime Minister Carney delivered a major policy address on fighting antisemitism in our country. Not surprisingly, the speech received mixed reactions: Critical, not enough substance, too much left out; Positive, a good beginning; important message; Unimpressed, a shrug-of-the-shoulder, we’ll-suspend-judgment-until-we-see-action.

We offer no assessment of the Prime Minister’s statement. We do, however, point to one key reference in his remarks that bears directly upon GAJE’s application for leave to appeal currently before the Supreme Court. Indeed, the language used by the prime minister echoed with singular resonance to language that appears in GAJE’s application.

•••

Prime Minister Carney said: “Pluralism in Canada is not the exception to the framework. Pluralism is the framework. Our secularism is open. The state takes no side in matters of belief, and the institutions of public life are not captured by any particular faith.

“In Canada, state neutrality does not empty the public square but ensures that no conception of the good — including humanism or atheism — is privileged by state power, and that every Canadian has the freedom of conscience to live as they believe.

“This means that the state—above the responsibilities we all have as citizens—has a special responsibility to ensure that no culture, faith, race, gender, or identity is threatened or suppressed. And it goes further to the responsibility of ensuring that everyone can be their whole selves in Canada.” (Our emphasis)

•••

To persuade the SCC that GAJE’s application deserves a hearing in court, we must prove that the law and society have “changed” or moved sufficiently in new directions since the court’s Adler decision some 30 years ago, in 1996 to warrant a reassessment of the case’s enduring applicability.

One of the developments in the law since 1996 to which GAJE has pointed, is the doctrine of “state neutrality” specifically raised by the prime minister, that was given life by the SCC itself, in 2015. To the prime minister, quite obviously, the doctrine of state neutrality in ecumenical matters, is now entrenched into the deep fabric of Canadian society.

GAJE’s legal team elaborated upon the doctrine of “state neutrality” in the material they filed in court. “In Mouvement laïque québecois v. Saguenay (City) (2015) this Court [the SCC] explained that the duty of state neutrality means “the state may not act in such a way as to create a preferential public space that favours certain religious groups and is hostile to others.” (The prime minister’s words echo quite strongly with the rule propagated by the SCC.)

“This issue was neither raised nor addressed in Adler because the doctrine of state neutrality had not been mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada as a pillar of Canadian law.”

“The current educational funding scheme, along with the current interpretation of section 93 of the Constitution Act, offends the state’s duty of neutrality. Ontario’s exclusive funding of only Roman Catholic schools to the exclusion of other religious schools, favours Roman Catholic communities while hindering other religious communities. Religious minorities are allowed to provide their children with the education they choose, but they do not have public support unless they choose secular or Roman Catholic education. This is both a breach of the duty of state neutrality and is also a breach of the section 15 equality rights guaranteed by the Charter.”

“[GAJE’s] application … 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.”

“As this Court explained in Loyola: Religious freedom must therefore be understood in the context of a secular, multicultural and democratic society with a strong interest in protecting dignity and diversity, promoting equality and ensuring the vitality of a common belief in human rights. In the context of funding religious schools, the question is how to balance “robust protection for the values underlying religious freedom with the values of a secular state” while also upholding the principle affirmed by this Court in Loyola that “a secular state [cannot] support or prefer the practices of one group over those of another.”

Prime Minister Carney effectively stated that the doctrine of “state neutrality” is part of the fabric of Canadian multiculturalism today. It was not in 1996. We hope the SCC notices.

•••

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

June 5, 2026

Last year at this time, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) reported upon a “surge” of higher levels among Jews seeking more engagement with fellow Jews and participation in Jewish communal life. At that time, JFNA research showed that about one third of the Jewish community “continued to engage at higher levels than before…through community, learning and personal relationships.”
  

Community experts concluded that the surge “appeared to be linked to the emotional impact” of Israel’s war against Hamas and “significant concern about antisemitism. 79% of Jews surveyed said they were deeply concerned about antisemitism.”

There is no reason, one year later, to believe that the concern about antisemitism has diminished. Indeed, Canadian experience suggests that the manifestations today of antisemitism are more concerning than even just one year ago. The recent release by B’nai Brith Canada of its annual survey of antisemitism in Canada would confirm that.

It is in this context of persistent, lingering disquiet over antisemitism, that Audra Berg, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Broward County in Florida, offered her suggestions on how to maintain community strength and cohesion. Her op-ed, “Holding a Jewish community together, consistently and over time”, appeared on the eJewishPhilanthropy website.

Berg wrote that “Jewish life feels both fragile and fiercely alive.” In this one line, Berg succinctly captured the dichotomy: the surge in antisemitism has evoked a surge in Jewish communal involvement.

She identified four principles “about deepening and growing community” that will imminently be applied in her community in an initiative called, Ignite Broward. The lessons for community leaders that she imparts are not new. They relate to: acknowledging and recognizing the seeking members of the community; personal safety; identity; and the need for inter-communal alliances. Even though Broward County is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in North America, her ideas are relevant here as well.

I draw readers’ attention to her comment on identity. She does not talk about the impact of Jewish education. Rather, she talks about participating along with others, in other words, experiencing the kinship of Jewish peoplehood that stems from the sense of shared experience.

Berg described conversation among a group of teens who were “what being Jewish meant to them, right now.

“Some hesitated. Some spoke quickly. Some admitted they weren’t sure what they believed, or where they fit. But they stayed in the conversation. And as they talked — about Israel, about social media, about what they were hearing from friends at school — something shifted. Not in what they knew, but in how they saw themselves: not as observers of Jewish life, but as participants in it.

“What mattered, in that moment, was not what they were taught, but that they were in it together — speaking, listening and seeing themselves reflected in one another.”

GAJE would use other language to arrive at the same conclusion as Berg’s about the forming of identity, namely…

Being immersed in the profound, life-enhancing depth of Judaism – appropriately and intensively – over time, across the important formative stages of a youngster’s life, specifically teaches that we are all in this together. Indeed, from our very beginning, at least ever since receiving the Torah at Sinai, we have always known that we are in this together. We have always been and will be that we are part of one another. That is 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

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

May 29, 2026

Last month, GAJE filed its application in the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal the decision in February of this year by Ontario’s Court Appeal that upheld the Divisional Court decision in September, 2024 overturning Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou’s decision in August 2023, allowing our application to proceed to a full hearing in court. 

Ontario’s Attorney General filed its material in response to GAJE’s application. Our legal team has filed our Reply.  

For GAJE’s application at least to be given a hearing, the court must agree to re-open or reconsider the legal validity today of the Adler case of 1996. It was this case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Ontario’s decision in the 1980’s refusing to fund other denominational or private schools apart from Catholic schools, was constitutional.

The Government of Ontario states that no legal, social or other changes have occurred to warrant overturning the applicability of the 1996 case. GAJE argues the opposite. There have indeed been sufficiently weighty and relevant developments in the law and in societal circumstances since 1996, to warrant opening the door to allow the court to look at the Adler case in light of those developments.

In brief summary, the following is Ontario’s argument: (Taken from the Response filed with the SCC by the Ontario Attorney General.)

• Ontario argues that the ruling of 1996 “turned on the unique constitutional protection afforded to Roman Catholic schools in Ontario.” This “unique constitutional protection” is a reference to the historical bargain of 1867 between Quebec and Ontario which facilitated the founding of the country and which is enshrined in s. 93(1) of the Constitution. (The fact that Quebec departed from the historical bargain in 1997 and thus cast aside the “unique constitutional protection’ for its minority Protestant community was deemed not factually germane by Ontario, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal.)

• As a result, Ontario further argues, s.93(1) is exempt from scrutiny of any legal or other developments, even evolving Charter rights and freedoms – s.2 protection of freedom of conscience and religion and s.15 equality provisions. Ontario states that “what is protected by ss. 2(a) and 15 of the Charter is irrelevant because Section 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867 forms a ‘comprehensive code with respect to denominational school rights….This “cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment.”

In reply to Ontario’s position, GAJE argued: (Taken from the Reply filed with the SCC by GAJE.)

• The substantial developments in the law and society that have developed over the last thirty years “are relevant to an interpretation of section 93, as well as the interplay between sections 29 (guaranteeing the rights and privileges of denominational schools in the Constitution) and 93…, which do not preclude funding of other denominational schools. However, this (GAJE’s) Application also seeks a ruling on the issues not raised in Adler and for which Adler is not a precedent.”

• While “[c]ourts must afford some leeway to the legislator in the Charter balancing exercise,” there is, to the fullest extent possible and subject to reasonable limits, an obligation to respect and adhere to Charter values within that exercise…In the context of funding religious schools, the question is how to balance “robust protection for the values underlying religious freedom with the values of a secular state” while also upholding the principle affirmed by this Court in Loyola that “a secular state [cannot] support or prefer the practices of one group over those of another.”

• The Respondent (GAJE) concedes that this Court in Adler did not determine whether the Applicants’ rights under sections 2(a) and 15 of the Charter were violated. To suggest that

consideration of the developments in the scope of the rights under sections 2(a) and 15 is

thereafter irrelevant, is to ask this Court to ignore three decades of jurisprudence. During

that time, the protection from infringement of those sections has been developed and become part of the constitutional fabric. We also seek this Court’s constitutional interpretation in light of the living tree doctrine.

• GAJE also asks the court to weigh other significant developments in the law and society since Adler was decided in relation to the question of the impermeability of S. 93. “A modern review

of the issues raised…particularly for those issues raised that were neither raised nor addressed in Adler, is warranted in light of these significant developments and changes in the law and society since 1996.

•••

Now, we await the SCC’s ruling.

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.

•••

Chag Shavuot samayach

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

May 21, 2026

Last week, we reported the direct, forthright messages from scholars and writers Haviv Rettig Gur and Prof. Coleman Hughes to campus-aged youngsters and their parents on how to confront the “social contagion” of brute antisemitism at universities and colleges today. They delivered, essentially, the same message to the hundreds in attendance at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal-hosted gathering in Toronto.

Gur urged us “to learn, teach and tell the story of the Jewish people”. Prof. Hughes urged students to know “who they are” to thereby enable themselves to “stand up for their values”. Both men acknowledged the difficulties involved in implementing their prescriptions.

We have all observed, over the past two and a half years, how the intimidation and bullying aimed at Jews and supporters of Israel have so poisoned the climate on some campuses that civility, respect and tolerance no longer grow there. Our children too frequently must confront the bent and crooked outcroppings of hatred. This is the world, today, in which, we earnestly, hope they will grow, develop and mature, nevertheless.

Many scholars, community workers, historians and other interested observers have begun to write on the subject of how our children might find the wherewithal to implement the ‘Gur-Hughes prescriptions’, that is, how to stand Jewishly tall in a landscape of “social contagion”.

For example, Michael Gencher, executive director of StandWithUs Australia, recently published an essay on eJP entitled Before resilience comes pride, in which he asks: “What helps when a Jewish young person is confronted by hostility, ignorance or the steady drip of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist messaging? …What works is a young person who already knows that being Jewish is something good, something deep and something worth holding onto.”

Gencher’s reflections rush to the difficult questions. “What helps when a Jewish young person is confronted by hostility, ignorance or the steady drip of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist messaging?

…What works is a young person who already knows that being Jewish is something good, something deep and something worth holding onto.”

Gencher understands that many young Jews are not raised with a deep familiarity of Jewish peoplehood. But he writes: “It is never too late. Pride can still be built. Identity can still be strengthened. A young Jew who did not receive that grounding at home can still find it through mentors, education, friendships, community and meaningful Jewish experiences. If we want resilient Jewish young people, then first we have to build proud Jewish young people. Not merely informed. Not merely prepared. Proud. Because the real test is not whether they can recite the right answer when challenged. It is whether they know who they are before anyone else tries to define them.”

It warrants emphasizing that “standing up” against the loud and boisterous spreaders of hate is not easy. But it also warrants emphasizing: this is the need of this hour in our history.

Gencher’s essay can be found at:

Before resilience comes pride

•••

In his memoir, Hostage, Eli Sharabi, recounts a conversation with Ori Danino and Hersh Goldberg-Polin after the latter two were confined, for a brief time, with Sharabi.

“Everyone is struggling. On our second day here, someone sighs, and Ori looks at him and says to Hersh, “Hersh, tell them the sentence you kept telling me back at the house.”

“What sentence?” we ask.

“Tell them,” says Ori.

“Hersh looks at us. “He who has a why can bear any how,” he says.”

“I mull it over. The saying feels like a gift.”

(Hersh, of course, was familiar with Victor Frankl’s teachings, for he had quoted the core philosophy in Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s seminal work. Perhaps, posthumously, through his restatement of “the sentence”, Hersh might also provide a similar gift of inspiration to our countless children contending with their own, very different, struggles.)

•••

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)

May 15, 2026

It has always been true that “there is strength in numbers”. The phrase is used so often that it has become a cliché. Except as it pertains to the Jewish people. We have simply never had the numbers. Indeed, our tradition teaches that we are, and have always been, “the few against the many”.

The source of our strength, therefore, derives elsewhere, not from our numbers. Rather, the source of our strength rises and surges from the values, and collective sense of common history and covenantal purpose that have enfolded our people since we exited slavery some 3,500 years ago. This is a foundational statement.

We must frequently restate and return to it as the first principle of defence against the haters intending to harm Jews and to brazenly erase, bit by bit, Jewish history from its essential place in modern history and in the development of modern Western society.

At a program in Toronto, earlier this week, entitled Voices of Change, hosted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Haviv Rettig Gur and Coleman Hughes articulated variations of this foundational statement when the discussion inevitably turned to the ubiquity and the virulence of antisemitism on campus.

Gur, the Israeli journalist and scholar, urged the Jewish members of the audience – across the generations who were in attendance – “to learn, teach and tell the story of the Jewish people”. He meant not only to one another but to the broader society as well. For the story of the Jewish people is the story of the evolution of the values that underpin civil, humane, democratic society. Gur pleaded with the audience to fight for Canada, because, as he so eloquently framed it, is one and the same fight against antisemitism.

Prof. Hughes, the American teacher and scholar, developed a further aspect to the call for prospective university students to know “who they are”. Prof. Hughes described many campuses these days as being “awash with social contagion.” However challenging, difficult, and even isolating for students to try to resist and turn back the contagion, Prof. Hughes pointedly suggested that “standing up for one’s values….is also a personal opportunity.”

“Embrace it,” he said, knowing that his prescription is not always easy to absorb. “This will be a step toward personal growth, maturity and development.”

Gur and Hughes, without ambiguity, in their own respective ways, firmly proclaimed, to members of our community, the same battlement cry required to fight the conspiracists who froth and flaunt their hatred of Jews. The ability, resilience and strength to fight antisemitism on campus derives from Jewish self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-confidence.

This formula – as we know – is not new. What is new is the extent and the nature of the phenomenon that Huges called “a social contagion”.

In fact, the Gur – Hughes formula echoed a cri de coeur from Alan Baker, Israel’s ambassador to Canada more than two decades ago, in 2005, in an interview with the Canadian Jewish News.

The foremost concern Ambassador Baker expressed for North American Jewry was over the troubling situation on campus.

“The campus is where our future leaders, in the Jewish and broader communities, are molded.

Yet there are concerted activities by certain Islamic and even Christian organizations there to push an anti-Israel agenda to try to influence the minds of our youth. Our community leaders must invest whatever resources are necessary to counter this campaign.”

Speaking emphatically, the British-born diplomat added, “Having been raised outside Israel, I appreciate the importance of a strong Jewish community using its resources to develop and maintain itself. For support of Israel to be strong, there has to be a strong local Jewish community.”

“Each community has an obligation to its own future. It must ensure education in Judaism and about Israel is given to every child. That [Jewish] education must be widely available and effective.”

Ambassador Baker’s message 21 years ago is the eternal message of Jewish survival: Education.

It is also GAJE’s message.

•••

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)

May 8, 2026

Jews, as well as law-respecting and democracy-cherishing individuals throughout the western world were not surprised by the fact of the anti-Israel-pro-Hamas demonstrations on October 8, 2023. We were, however, surprised and increasingly appalled at the nature of those demonstrations, how trans-border-organized they were, how sizable the numbers, how uniform the signage and especially how brazenly unembarrassed and shameless were the chanters breathlessly urging upon the world, the elimination of the State of Israel and of its Jews. (“From the river to the sea….”).

Our feelings of surprise intensified. For, after those first ugly days, the haters, marchers and chanters grew more voluble delivering their vile message, bolder in their tactics, and more audacious in their aspirations for violence. We need not examine the reasons why this was so. We need only observe, without reservation, that the abject failure of western governments – including that of Canada – through silence, or pro forma, banal, substance-less condemnations – “This is not who we are.” – have effectively encouraged the haters to become more aggressive in trying to achieve their malevolent aims. The constant demonization of the State of Israel has led inexorably to the intimidation, harassment, bullying and attempted harming of Jews. Here in Canada.

Now, when the demonizers target our communal way of life and our religion, we are no longer surprised. We are angry and determined.

Earlier this week B’nai Brith Canada issued a press release calling attention to the campaign by the anti-Israel-pro-Hamas champions to have the Government of Canada revoke the charitable status of our Jewish schools because the schools teach our children about the State of Israel.

It is not overstatement to write that seeking to remove the charitable status of our schools is to seek their demise. Seeking the demise of our schools is effectively to seek the demise of the keystone of our communal way of life: Jewish education.

This new, malign reach by the haters is aimed at erasing Jewish life here, in our society. That may sound overstated but it is not. There can be no truthful, meaningful Jewish education in Jewish schools that does not rest on the core, foundational triad of “The faith of Israel. The Land of Israel. The people of Israel” The education of which we write is not about learning to be “religious”. It is about cherishing our history, traditions, culture, and sense of peoplehood.

“Eliminating the charitable status of these schools on these grounds would give credence to an antisemitic double standard and infringe on the right of thousands of Jewish youths to a Jewish education rooted in their system of beliefs,” Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy, pointed out.

Robertson noted that the campaign attempts to weaponize Canadian charity law and appears to be part of a concerted effort to “villainize” Jewish institutions. He reminded us that the singling out of Jewish schools comes on the heels of a previous effort by the same groups to discredit and defund certain Jewish summer camps that have Israel-related programming. Such campaigns “demonize” Zionism and Zionists, prejudicing Canadian Jews, the vast majority of whom believe in the right of the State of Israel to exist.

Robertson also noted that some of the groups associated with the campaign are known to promote or celebrate acts of terror targeting Israelis or Jews and said they cannot be treated as credible or moral actors. They are engaged in what he describes as “sustained, intentional and organized targeting” of Canada’s Jewish community.

In this latter observation, Robertson echoed Simon Wolle, B’nai Brith Canada’s Chief Executive Officer, who stated: “This is not an isolated issue or campaign. It is a coordinated and malicious attack on Jewish life extending from sector to sector and charity to charity.”

We commend B’nai Brith Canada for shining public light on this dark, new development.

This is our fight. All of us. We must convey our outrage to our federal representatives and demand response that prevents the attacks on Jews and on Jewish life.

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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)

May 1, 2026

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.

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• “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.

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

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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)

April 24, 2026