This has been a “heavy” week.

Wednesday (October 7) was a particularly heavy day.

The past three years have been heavy, almost beyond imagining.

The norms of social civility, the shared beliefs in democracy’s pre-eminence, and the paramountcy of morality as the measure of human endeavour, have been and are being ploughed under the fractured foundation stones of our way of life, by the haters of Israel, Jews the West, and their witting and unwitting accomplices.

The British journalist, Melanie Phillips, described these past three years, in her typical, hard-hitting way. “It wasn’t merely that on October 7, 2023 terrible atrocities were perpetrated upon more than 1450 innocent souls in the State of Israel. On that day, a very great evil was unleashed throughout the west, an evil that three years later threatens to consume it altogether.”

She elaborated. “Instead of rising to the support of the Israeli Jews targeted for such genocidal attack, the West turned against them. The atrocities were denied, even though the Hamas terrorists had filmed themselves on their Go-Pro cameras as they went about their infernal business…

“Professing grotesquely to be standing for conscience and compassion, western liberals and their governments declared that Israel – engaged in a desperate war of self-defence against the genocidal war being perpetrated by Hamas and its sponsor Iran – was itself a genocide and that the Israelis were guilty of war crimes.

“Every single part of that libellous and preposterous inversion has been shown to be untrue.”

As a grassroots volunteer organization whose aim is to secure – in perpetuity – the future thriving of the Jewish people through access to affordable education, GAJE understands that there can be no true Jewish future, nor indeed a true Western future, if truth is banished from the sustaining infrastructure of our lives.

For this reason, GAJE shares a statement made by Elisha Wiesel on September 30, 2026, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., about the need to defend truth, at an event honoring what would have been his father, Elie’s, 98th birthday. Specifically, Wiesel urged the museum to publicly decry the falsity of the charge of genocide hurled against Israel.

“Because it is a federal institution,” Wiesel said, “the museum faces constraints that a private citizen like me doesn’t…. But, on one question, the museum has a unique responsibility that it has not yet met. 

“Since Oct. 7, 2023, the word “genocide” has been used as a weapon against Israel — on campuses, at the United Nations and by a sitting member of the museum’s own governing council, Sen. Bernie Sanders. The charge is false. Genocide, as defined by the 1948 convention that followed the Holocaust, requires intent to destroy a people as such. Israel has fought a war it did not start against an enemy that sees its own civilians as expendable and openly declares its intent to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7. The suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is real, and it should trouble everyone; but suffering in war, even terrible suffering, is not genocide. What Israel has done is not genocide but the prevention of genocide. 

“This is not a matter of semantics. The genocide charge turns the Jewish state into the new Nazis, and the Jewish People back into a threat to be removed from the family of nations. It inverts the Holocaust. Those who started the accusation knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that the uninformed would spread hate like wildfire. 

“The museum’s leaders have spoken as individuals….The institution itself, however, has not spoken. It made its own findings for Darfur, the Yazidis and the Rohingya. It has the scholars, the credibility and the mandate to do the same here: to explain, … why the genocide label does not fit Gaza, and what the misuse of Holocaust language does to Jews around the world… [I]t can surely address a false accusation of genocide against the Jewish state. Declining to join the accusation is not the same as dismantling it, and only the museum can do that.”

Wiesel had no qualms about his task. He determined to conscript the flagship institution in the U.S. with unassailable credibility on the subject, to debunk the lie of genocide hurled each day against the Jewish State.

Wiesel concluded: “My father believed profoundly in the power of words. They could, he said, at times attain the quality of deeds.”

Of course, we applaud Wiesel’s effort to defend truth. His father’s belief in the power of words stems fully from within Judaic teachings. The late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warned against the rise and embrace of “alternative facts” within public and private discourse. He characterized it as a threat to humanity. “When people stop believing in objective truth, mutual trust erodes, making it impossible for a free society to function.”

GAJE views defending the truth as part of our mission to try to help bring affordable Jewish education to all parents that seeks it for their children. That defence falls upon us all. Where truth is trampled, the trampling of human life soon follows.

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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

October 9, 2026

It has been more than three months that the Supreme Court of Canada has had on its desk GAJE’s application pleading that the court set aside the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision dismissing our case.

We hope the extent of this waiting period augers well for our hoped-for outcome. Hope and the force it can stir within the heart are not to be underestimated.

Nor are the resolute belief in the justice of our cause and the cause of its justice.

Matthew Lau, ad adjunct scholar at the Fraser Institute, published an op-ed essay this week in the National Post that shines high voltage lighting on merely one aspect of that justice. He was commenting on a report delivered at a staff meeting of the York Regional District School Board (YRDSB) that posited the jaw-dropping assertion (the truth of which the author refused to discuss) that “[T]he institution of education is an instrumental tool for maintaining and furthering the ideology of white supremacy.”

Lau points to recent data to show that there is simply no evidence to support the white supremacy theory when one examines the educational outcomes of the diverse student populations from various school boards, including the YRDSB.

However, Lau uses the proposition – whether true or not – to make more deeply compelling observations about the state of the educational system in Ontario.

“For the sake of argument, suppose that statement is true and educational institutions in Ontario really are tools for “furthering the ideology of white supremacy.” How best could we dismantle these racist institutions? The answer is easy: school choice. In B.C, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec – but not Ontario – the provincial governments partially fund independent schools, making them more affordable to more families. Ontario should follow suit.

“Allowing greater choice would help remedy the unfairness of Ontario’s current system, which effectively traps many families in government-run schools because those wishing to leave must pay for their children’s education twice – once through taxes, and again for independent school tuition…”.

On the other hand, what if the statement is untrue, and Ontario’s educational system is not a tool for furthering white supremacy? In that case, parents still urgently need more school choice, so families can escape a system that engages in radical politics and wrongly tells children that the education system is racist against minorities to the benefit of the white population.”

Lau does not enter into a discussion on the merits of the suspect ‘white supremacy’ thesis. Rather, he makes the more cutting observation about Ontario’s educational system that arises from the very appearance, let alone, touting of the thesis at the YRDSB. The system is outdated and serves very poorly the families of the province. 

Lau’s conclusion is as powerful as it is plainly obvious. “The reality is that Ontario families that want to choose schools outside their local government-run school have zero support from the provincial government. Some students genuinely experience discrimination or bullying. Others might be fed up with the activist rhetoric seeping into the classroom. Others may simply want a different academic approach. Whatever their reasons, Ontario families – like families in other provinces – should have more access to alternatives to the government-run school system.”

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Lau pleads for offering Ontario families more choice in the education of their children. This would work to the educational benefit of all Ontario families and to the overall educational system. Of course, it also makes the system fairer for all Ontario’s children.

GAJE pleads that by preferring – today, in 2026 – to entirely fund the education of the children of one religion exclusively, the government of Ontario offends the provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Of course, providing educational funding, on an equal basis to the children of the Jewish community and to other denominational or non-denominational minority communities, would also make the system fairer for all Ontario’s children.

And so, GAJE believes resolutely in the justice of our cause (fairness) and in the cause of its justice (equal treatment according to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

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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

Chag Samayach

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

October 2, 2026

GAJE exists to try to help make Jewish education affordable or more affordable to young Jewish families. That has been our purpose for more than a decade, since the inception of the group.

As readers of this weekly update know, this space is usually dedicated to developments in GAJE’s lawsuit for educational funding fairness against the Government of Ontario or developments in the world of Jewish education.

Sometimes, when circumstances warrant, we depart from writing about the above two subjects, although in truth, all the subjects discussed in this weekly update are inter-related.

This week, circumstances warrant.

In particular, we refer to the pre-Yom Kippur statement delivered by the leader of the federal NDP, Avi Lewis. In the days since its release, great deal has been written, across various media, about Lewis’ preachy, smug and supercilious statement. We shall not repeat the conclusions articulately expressed by many commentators about the gap between what Lewis said and in his denial of what his language actually meant.

Of course, an extra dark element of relevance and breath-stopping gasp attached to Lewis’ words in light of the foiled attack, Sunday night, against the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville and the arrest earlier by the Durham Regional Police, of a 19-year-old for allegedly making online threats to carry out a mass shooting at a synagogue in the Durham Region. But Lewis’ words may be weighed without regard to the two violence-intending events.

Speaking ostensibly – but not really – to the Jewish people, Lewis said: “This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name”. 

His target audience for these targeted 23 words were his hard-core political partisans and the world of the haters who believe every malign statement about Jews and Israel. Lewis perpetuated the abject lie about a genocide. And he occasioned more delight in the abstruse, cloudy minds of Jew-haters by confirming for them that it is the Jews who are committing genocide. His audience must believe him because he did not say these words as a political leader – who most people believe or disbelieve – but rather as a Jew, that is, a man qualified, as well as entitled, to offer an authoritative opinion on the deplorable behaviour of fellow Jews.

Lewis’ statement was false, hypocritical, transparently politically expedient, morally disgusting and dangerous.

Many others noticed and said so as well.

The real purpose we mention Lewis’ statement, however, is to introduce the work of The Jewish Majority, an organization in the United Sates, that provides resources, information and training to help advocates from the vast mainstream of the Jewish grassroots educate the public about Jewish priorities.

The Jewish Majority was founded precisely for situations involving behaviours or statements such as the Lewis statement, namely, by a Jew, as a Jew, to an unknowing, broader, general public.

Jonathan Schulman, the organization’s executive director, explained how and why. “Jewish anti-Zionists have learned that organization and repetition can make a fringe position look mainstream. The Jewish community must learn the corresponding lesson: Numbers alone do not guarantee representation.

“We no longer have the luxury of silence or of hoping that someone else will speak for us.

A small number of Jews are elevated precisely because their views are useful to political movements whose larger objectives most Jews oppose. Their Jewish identity becomes a shield against scrutiny and a substitute for evidence of broader Jewish support.

“We help members of the Jewish community to articulate mainstream Jewish positions and represent their communities effectively in the press. Jewish leaders who want to use their grassroots voices in support of the community should contact us to learn more.”

The organization’s website is at: https://jewishmajority.org

•••

We cannot persuade – nor should we even try – all of the haters to stop hating. Rather, our efforts must be aimed at preventing the haters and the intimidators from taking over our streets and our institutions. We must refuse to be intimidated. We must enable fair-minded people of good will to hear the truth. And we must call on our authorities to enforce the laws against the wilful intimidators and their confederates.

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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

Chag Succot Samayach

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

September 25, 2026

It is a unique, self-directed, personal assessment and then, re-calibration if or as required, that the Torah established for us at the start of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar year.

The first day of the month: Rosh Hashana. The tenth day: Yom Kippur. The fifteenth: Succot. Revelry for sybarites are not part of the program. Rather, prayers, liturgical poetry, traditional ritual and family-centred culinary enjoyments and permanent recurring remembrances are.

Individual and collective memory are the river on which Jewish peoplehood flows – forever.

What is taught in school is reinforced in the home. What is lived at home has been learned in school. That is, and will always be – the self-perpetuating, integrated gear of the wheel of Jewish life.

The smooth functioning of that gear is very much on display with the Tishrei trilogy of holidays – usually at or near the very start of the school year.

David Zalik, the co-founder of the Zalik Foundation, has written an op-ed on the essential role of Jewish day school education in helping launch our children onto a life-long path of self-confidence, goodness and purpose.

The essay is impressive and important. It was published this week by eJP (https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewish-day-schools-are-a-bubble-and-that-is-the-point/?utm_source=cio)

We reproduce only a few short excerpts.

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“…Let’s turn to the only outstanding question that matters: What is actually best for your child, not only their college prospects? 

“Children flourish when they’re known by caring adults, surrounded by stable friendships, rooted in a community and given a clear sense of who they are and where they belong — the very conditions Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, argues modern childhood has been quietly stripping away. It’s increasingly where developmental psychology has landed. 

“Jewish day schools didn’t set out to become well-designed environments for raising children in the 21st century. They simply held onto what children need most while much of the culture let it go. These schools work because they provide three things that have become scarce in modern childhood: children who are known, children who belong and children who grow up with a clear sense of who they are. 

“A day school lifts that burden (of being the “other” in public school.). The holidays are everyone’s holidays, the calendar is theirs, the rhythm of the place is their own. Your child isn’t the different one here — they’re home. They get to spend their formative years not performing or defending an identity, but just living, with all the attention that frees up for friendship, curiosity, and joy. For a lot of children, that’s the difference between enduring school and loving it.

“There’s a deeper form of belonging here, too, that most children today grow up without: the felt sense of being part of something older and larger than themselves — a people, a story, a chain that runs back hundreds of generations. It’s one of the quieter losses of modern childhood, hard to name until you meet a child who has it. A day school hands a child that inheritance early, as a birthright, rather than leaving it as something they might go looking for later, if they ever do.

“Most (secular) schools teach children what to think about and how to score well. Few teach them how to be a person. Day schools build ethics into the day itself, not as a poster on the wall but as something students spend years discussing and practicing. They come out having absorbed a simple, unfashionable idea: that a life is measured not only by what you achieve, but by what you owe other people.

“A child who knows what they believe and has somewhere they unmistakably belong, moves through the world differently. That’s the kind of confidence that doesn’t crack under pressure.

“The child who first knows exactly who they are is the one who can later walk into a room full of difference and engage it without fear and without dissolving into it. Security isn’t the opposite of openness. It’s the precondition for it.”

•••

Helping our children learn and understand who they are, as knowledgeable, caring Jews on this earth, is the Jewish schools first task. And the Jewish home’s eternal embrace.

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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

Gmar chatimah tovah

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

September 18, 2026

This evening, after the third star appears in the sky, as the sun retreats further west, we can look to a new horizon: the Jewish calendar year 5787. Rosh Hashana will have arrived.

We hope and pray the year will indeed bring the sweetness that for centuries has been the thoughtful yearning of our traditional holiday greetings. Sweetness aside, it falls to us – as it has always in every generation – to help fashion our tomorrows and to steer our lives toward the future we yearn. As the late renowned rabbi, scholar, historian, teacher Prof. Michael Brown often said: “We will write our future. It is not yet written.”

But we need Heaven’s help.

And so, during the Holyday that starts tonight and ushers in the Ten Days of Awe, our prayers glide toward the ultimate issues of our existence: a healthy, rewarding life for our families, alongside the imperative of a life well and purposefully lived according to the values of the eternal people whose history and traditions we share.

Much of the holiday’s liturgical poetry speaks of the mysteries and wonders of Creation. But the words that truly focus our minds and stir our hearts are words of tender pleading and unbroken hope. Such as….

“Remember us for life. (Let us live another year. Please)

“Inscribe us in the Book of Life. For Your sake, God, life. (Let us live another year Please.)

“Our Father, our King, have pity on us, our children and our infants. ((Let us live another year. Please.)

“Our Father, our King, act for Your sake, if not for ours. ((Let us live another year Please.)

These and the many other entreaties with which we are all familiar, are deeply personal supplications. They are whispered privately. They are chanted aloud. But both the whispered and the louder voice of our prayers are uttered in plural form. Our individual lives matter. Our lives, all life, is irreplaceable. But our individual lives are tied to our community of lives.

It has always been thus. And thus, it will always be.

The late remarkable Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks described the essence of Rosh Hashana as thinking about, securing and building the future.

There are no prophets who can see tomorrow.

Nor are there any pundits, op-ed writers, hate-laden protestors, or knowledge-less experts who can hector their falsehoods and disrespect of truth onto a wilful, confident, strong Jewish community and our democracy-loving allies.

May we be able to say at this time next year that, indeed, we did our utmost tin 5787 to make it the best year yet, to secure and build our respective futures, to determine our own destinies for the betterment of our families, our people and the wider world.

Shana tovah umetukah.

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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

Shana Tovah uMetukah

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education

September 11, 2026

This update is the last of calendar year 5786. The next one arrives on the eve of Rosh Hashana 5787.

The numbers are real, yet also, almost abstract, like very high floating clouds. We understand the science, but we cannot truly “reach” or “touch” them from within the earth-bound pressures and pleasures of our daily lives.

One way, however, that the numbers are within “reach”, is to understand them as the opposite of an abstraction, namely, as an affirmation of palpably verifiable Jewish peoplehood. Thousands of years: forebears, Moses our teacher, kings and judges, prophets, destruction, expulsion, dispersion world-wide and then…Return.

Upon reflection – which is one of Rosh Hashana’s perfect pre-occupations – the duration, nature, persistence, underlying values and singularity of Jewish peoplehood are a remarkable attestation of something undeniably transcendent and vital for the world.

As GAJE awaits the decision of the Supreme Court that will let us know whether we can proceed with our case for fairness in educational funding in Ontario, this moment in our annual Jewish calendar cycle deserves a re-appreciation of the peoplehood that has brought fulfillment and purpose to Jews from the very beginning, as well as blessing to the world. Indeed, it is the goose-bumpy sense of belonging to the Jewish people that motivates and has motivated GAJE’s efforts for more than a decade.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog succinctly expressed the notion of Jewish peoplehood at a ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem in which he received an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York.

“The State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry are both facing their own challenges, but the Jewish people have a shared destiny and a shared responsibility….

“May we all continue to build together that same wondrous chain of the Jewish people: a chain connecting tradition to scholarship, Judaism to the wider world, Israel to the Diaspora, and past to future….”.

President Herzog spoke eloquently. He referenced “shared destiny and a shared responsibility”, and the “wondrous chain of the Jewish people…connecting…past and future.”                                                                  

In speaking thus, President Herzog summoned the language and the themes held sacrosanct by countless sages and “ordinary” Jews throughout the ages. He deliberately echoed the parameters of Jewish peoplehood taught by Moses himself in his farewell address to the People of Israel – formerly a rabble of slaves, but at that moment, a free nation governed by law and principle – as they were about to enter into the Land of Israel. With a stunning economy of words, Moses framed the essential aspect of Jewish peoplehood. (Deuteronomy, Chap. 29)

“You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God: your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials—the entire body of Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from chopper of wood to drawers of water – to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God…”.

“And not with you alone, do I make this covenant … But with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and also with those who are not with us here this day.”

Moses swept into his arms and into the eternal embrace of Jewish life and Jewish responsibility, the entirety of the people. All of us. Those present at that epochal moment. And those not present, namely, those who had died during the formative, 40-year march to the Land of Israel, and those of us not yet born. All of us. For all time.

That is why GAJE has striven these past years to achieve funding fairness for Jewish education – for the sake of those among us, those we brought us to this day, and for those yet to be born.

This is our reflection of Jewish education, peoplehood, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog and Moses, our teacher as we approach Rosh Hashana 5787.

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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

September 4, 2026

Not surprisingly, the imminent end of summer vacation and the return to school, have elicited pundits’ pleas to the government of Ontario to re-consider and revise the delivery of education in our province.

Earlier this week, for example, Matthew Lau wrote in the Financial Post: “With a new school year approaching, it’s time to remind everyone that Ontario’s public school system is a gigantic mess.”

Lau was straightforward, his commentary salted with obvious frustration. At times, one could also sense a measure of melancholy. For, as he made clear to the reader, it does not have to be this way.

Lau states that the quality of Ontario’s public education system “seems bound to deteriorate further”. The best remedy to arrest and repair the system, he maintains, is to give families more choice in the education of their children.

“Giving families alternatives to the government-run school system provides access to better education, while increased competition forces improved quality by breaking the government/union monopoly. School choice can also deliver fiscal benefits to taxpayers as government funding for students in unionized government-run schools is higher than for students outside it.”

Giving parents more freedom to choose the educational approach for their children, Lau maintains, results in better overall educational outcomes and better fiscal management for the government. He cites two American studies to prove the case as well as a recent study by Cardus, a non-partisan, faith-oriented think tank based in Hamilton. According to its website, Cardus is dedicated “to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.” GAJE has relied on its research in the past and cited the think tank’s work in this space.

Lau wrote: “(A) recent Cardus study on independent schools in Ontario highlighted yet more benefits of school choice. Unlike British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec, Ontario doesn’t allow a portion of families’ taxes to follow their children to a private school. Despite this, there is a clear demand for alternatives to the government-run system. The Cardus study found that more than 300 independent schools have been founded in the province in the past four years.

“Beyond improving academic outcomes, school choice gives families options other than the monolithic conformity of the government-run system.”

He concludes without nuance. “The evidence continues to show that more choice would benefit parents, students and taxpayers.”

Lau – and the studies upon which he relies, urge more parental choice in Ontario’s educational system because it is the substantively correct thing to do: educationally and fiscally. Ontario’s public education system is anachronistic, no longer adoptive of best educational practices, and dramatically out of step with most of Canada and the OECD states. Indeed, over the years, in this very space, GAJE has often called attention to that same research.

Equally as important, if not actually more, over the years, GAJE has pleaded with the province to allow more choice to parents in our educational system on the basis of undoing and repairing a longstanding injustice. To no avail. The province has refused to allow us to argue our case on its merits. The Court of Appeal has agreed with the province.

Anxiously, we await the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, whether we will be allowed to argue the legal/moral/fairness/justice/equality basis for granting parents more choice in the education of their children in Ontario, as is the case in the next five largest provinces in the country.

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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

August 28, 2026

Last week we referred to renowned French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy’s advice to Jews the world over regarding the rising tide of antisemitism. We did so specifically in reference to the report published by the Federal Government, Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE). The findings of the report were grim. For example, one of the key findings was that some 96% of respondents said they had experienced or witnessed at least one instance of antisemitism over the previous 12 months. The report’s other key findings were of the same alarming order.

Lévy urged us not to abandon our optimism or our resolve in fighting back. “One thing is certain, he said. “We must not give up, because the battle, contrary to what some believe, is not lost in advance. Jews, the friends of the Jewish people, the friends of democracy and genuine liberals can win this fight.”

We refer again to Lévy’s exhortation because it was relevant this week too in light of the published report describing the toxicity of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hatred aimed at Jews permeating Toronto Metropolitan University.

We shall not report on the details of the report. It is more of the same: falsification, vilification, and intimidation. But worse. Rather, we reproduce a different sort of exhortation for Jews. This one from an educator suggesting an educationally-based response to the anti-Jewish campaign.

•••

Josh Schalk, executive directorof the Jewish Youth Promise and a trustee of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, recentlywrote of educating youngsters about their Judaism in a manner that fosters manifestations of courage in representing themselves to the bad-mouthers.

(https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/were-teaching-jewish-teens-to-be-afraid/?utm_source=cio)

The following is an excerpt from Schalk’s essay.

“Organizations like TalkIsrael and Lost Tribe are spearheading new models that engage teens directly in the digital spaces they inhabit, encouraging them to share Jewish culture and values with pride and confidence rather than simply mitigating misinformation….

“When teens interact with people or content expressing confidence in who they are and pride in their Jewish heritage, it reshapes their relationship with their own identity. It reminds them that being Jewish is not just something to defend, but something to live.

“Jewish education must offer more of this — not just awareness, but courage.

“Courage is what allows a student to speak openly about their values, even when it’s uncomfortable. It is what grounds pride — not in denial of challenges, but in a deep connection to heritage, culture, and purpose. And it is what enables young people to engage thoughtfully with complexity, rather than retreat from it.

“This kind of courage is not abstract. It can be taught, and it must be cultivated intentionally. Moral courage means giving students the language and confidence to articulate who they are and what they stand for. Cultural courage comes from experiencing Judaism not only as history or obligation, but as a living, meaningful source of identity and pride. Intellectual courage equips students to wrestle with difficult questions about Israel, about history, about belonging without losing their sense of self.

“These forms of courage require a coordinated effort across the environments that shape young people in schools, camps, families, and their own communities. Classrooms provide knowledge and context. Camps create joyful, identity-affirming experiences. Parents model what it looks like to live Jewishly with confidence. When these forces align, they model what we’re trying to articulate to our younger Jewish generations. 

“None of this means ignoring the reality of antisemitism. It’s important our students understand the world they are navigating, and they deserve tools to respond to it. But caution is a survival tactic, not a foundation for identity. If we are not careful, we risk raising a generation fluent in responding to hate, but less confident in explaining why being Jewish matters in the first place.

The goal of Jewish education cannot only be survival. It’s our responsibility to raise the next generation of Jews who are proud enough and grounded enough to show up fully and lead.”

Schalk’s prescription is patently challenging and demanding. Bernard-Henri Lévy however would plead with us not to give up.

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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

August 21, 2026

The Association for Canadian Studies was commissioned recently by the federal government’s former envoy against antisemitism, “to survey Jewish students on their lived experiences of antisemitism on campus, as well as to survey the broader student population on attitudes toward Jews and antisemitism.”

The results of the survey were published last week on the Government of Canada website, under the title Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE).

Key findings of the survey, as reported on the website, include the following:

• 84% of Jewish respondents said antisemitism is a serious problem on campus.
• 95.7% said they had experienced or witnessed at least one instance of antisemitism over the previous 12 months
• 70% said their university does not take antisemitism seriously, and 68% said their campus is not a safe and inclusive place for Jewish students.
• 72% limit what they say in class about being Jewish, and 57% avoid wearing or displaying Jewish symbols because of safety concerns.
• 18% of incidents cited faculty members, 7% involved teaching assistants, and 7% involved administrators or staff.
• 36% encountered course content or classroom discussion they experienced as antisemitic or biased, while 34% said a professor introduced Jews, Judaism, Israel, or Zionism when unrelated to the course subject.
• 45% encountered Holocaust denial or distortion often or sometimes, and 65% encountered it “at least rarely.”
• 81% reported hateful or discriminatory treatment of Zionists on campus often or occasionally; 71% reported antisemitic vandalism; 54% reported intimidation or threats directed at Jews; and 22% reported physical violence directed at Jews.
• 34% identified online or social media spaces as a location where incidents occurred, 33%identified student organizations or campus events, 25% classrooms or lecture halls, 23% nearby off-campus spaces, and 9% in student residences and housing.
• 33% reported the incident they described. Among those who reported, 63% were dissatisfied with how it was handled, and 52% of non-reporters said they did not think reporting would help.

The results are distressing. There is no denying or downplaying these abjectly appalling findings.

To help us understand what our next steps must be in light of the CASE data, GAJE offers the words renowned French philosopher and author, Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Lévy addressed a gathering last summer in Haifa on the world-wide rising tide of antisemitism.The philosopher-journalist-activist admittedthat he had beenshocked by the immediacy and the ubiquity of anti-Israel protests after October 7. But despite the enormity of the problem, Lévy pleaded that Jews must not abandon their optimism or their resolve in being able to fight back. Direct, if sparse, his words were unequivocal. They are germane and even inspirational.

“But one thing is certain: We must not give up, because the battle, contrary to what some believe, is not lost in advance. Jews, the friends of the Jewish people, the friends of democracy and genuine liberals can win this fight.”

We ought to heed Lévy’s words.

We have no choice.

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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

August 14, 2026

Since the beginning of time, it is fair to say, the overarching hopes and aspirations of parents have been to keep their children safe from harm. However, since the beginning of time, it is equally fair to say, parents have understood that such hopes and aspirations are impossible to fulfil. Dangers always lurk. Parents cannot keep all dangers away from those whom they love. Nor do children lead the fullness of their lives under their parents’ protective wings. But since the beginning of time, when it came to their children, parents have always tried to carve possible out of impossible.

October 7 birthed a relatively new danger for Jews in North America, especially for young Jews. We are inundated without cease, in every virtual, digital and physical space of communication, by vile, hateful, false accusations about who we are. Only this week, for example, viral conspirators accused Israel of causing the forest fires burning in Europe. Others (or perhaps the same) conspiracy champions accused Israel of engineering the migrant crisis at the Moroccan-Spanish border in Ceuta.  

Living under such constant condemnation and denunciation can create risks to our children’s sense of Jewish self, let alone, God forbid, to their physical selves.

In a brilliant, inspiring essay, Who gets to explain the Jews?, Steve Freedman, head of school at Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County (N.J.), reflects upon these worrisome challenges for Jews in North America. He acknowledges that we cannot eradicate the accusations, we cannot keep our children from colliding with the obsessively driving, resurrected ancient/modern harm. But he does suggest how parents can help their children cope.

We reproduce only select portions of Freedman’s essay. We recommend it to our readers.

It may be read at: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/who-gets-to-explain-the-jews/

Freedman begins his essay by referring to societal similarities at the turn of the last century to our own time, when hateful lies about Jews – much as today – were the intellectual currency throughout much of Europe. Freedman writes that scholars and chroniclers of Jewish life, Ahad Ha’am, for one, worried that “Jews would start seeing themselves the way their accusers saw them.”

The purpose of Freedman’s essay is to try to prevent such an outcome. He argues that it is the “sacred space” of the Jewish day school “where a child learns, early, not to believe the accusation at all.”

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“The most urgent job of Jewish education right now is not fighting antisemitism directly. It is making sure our children are not first introduced to their own history, their own people and their own homeland by those who mean them harm. It is making sure they can explain themselves to themselves before someone else does it for them.

“That is the strongest case I know for Jewish day schools right now….the existential one. Who gets to a child’s sense of self first?

“A child who has already engaged with the real Jewish story, in depth, from people who love them, is much harder to indoctrinate into someone else’s version of it.

“A Jewish child should be able to spot a lie about Jews the way Ahad Ha’am’s generation could spot the blood libel: with no doubt. By the time that child is a college student, or an adult among friends or colleagues, they should also be able to recognize an uncomfortable truth about Jews or about Israel, and know the difference.

“A community that doesn’t educate its own children first, eventually lets someone else, an algorithm, a stranger, a viral post, decide which parts of its identity survive. That failure isn’t theirs. It’s ours.

“Ahad Ha’am’s half consolation was knowing the whole world could be wrong about the Jews. His fuller worry was that Jews would come to believe it anyway, once the accusation grew too diffuse to disprove outright. He was describing 1892. He could have been describing a comments section in 2026. Our job isn’t to teach children that the world is always wrong; that would be its own kind of lie. Our job is to make sure they meet their own story before the internet tries to write it for them, and to give them the tools to know, when the two versions conflict, which one to trust.

“Send them to Jewish day schools because culture, traditions and story are worth knowing on their own terms, before anyone else gets to explain them first. Not because the world might hate them, or because a stranger online might lie to them. An identity built only in opposition to what others say ends up limited and reactive, still defined by the accuser, just in the negative. They deserve the texts, the arguments and the memory that shaped our people, not as a defense to be deployed but as a self already formed. When they run into someone who gets Jews or Israel wrong, that inheritance gives them something no viral rebuttal ever will. The ability to stand in their own story while judging what other people say about it.

“Who gets to explain the Jews? If we don’t take our children’s Jewish education seriously, the answer will keep being: everyone but the Jews. And increasingly, a machine that doesn’t even know their names.”

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We must equip our children with the knowledge – the ability – to fend off the harm intended by today’s anti-Jewish accusers. Through Jewish education, our children must learn who they are. Only in this way will they know how to deflect and discard as utter rubbish and intellectual ordure, the calumnies shouted everywhere about Jews. And for this, they will be individualy much stronger and the collective Jewish future, more assured.

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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

August 7, 2026