Looking back….

On August 21, Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice rejected the attempt by the Government of Ontario to throw out of court GAJE’s application to compel Ontario to introduce fairness in the province’s educational funding.

In 46 pages of compelling, controlled reasoning and detailed research, Judge Papageorgiou explained why she believed GAJE’s case deserves to be heard on its merits in court. She wrote:

“There is a reasonable chance that the Grassroots Applicants will be able to satisfy the test in Bedford and Carter (the rules for revisiting Supreme Court decisions). In that regard, there is a reasonable chance that an application judge may find that the Grassroots Applicants have raised: i) new circumstances or evidence which have fundamentally shifted the parameters of the debate; and/or ii) new legal issues as a result of significant developments in the law which support the revisitation of binding precedent.

“My finding in this regard is not based upon one single argument raised by the Grassroots Applicants; it is based upon the combined effect and totality of the new circumstances (social, political and legislative) and developments in the law they have raised. “

Judge Papageorgiou did not decide the case on its merits. She was not asked to do so. She was asked to decide whether GAJE’s case should be given a hearing in the courts. She decided that it should. Her decision was enormously significant. For the first time in nearly three decades, a court agreed that parents and grandparents of children attending Jewish schools ought to have their pleas for funding fairness and justice adjudicated in court. GAJE still does not have a date for a hearing on its merits. Not surprisingly, Ontario brought a motion for permission to appeal Judge Papageorgiou’s ruling. A decision on that motion is expected early in the new year.

And so, we wait and hope that Judge Papageorgiou’s decision will not be overruled.

Then, on October 7, Jewish history changed forever.

The events of that horrific day and the stunningly shameless manifestations of hatred toward Israelis and Jews, in the day’s aftermath, on the streets, in the workplaces and academies throughout the civilized world, left us – at first – with diminished space in our emotion-choked hearts and minds for pondering the next steps of GAJE’s application.

But we – and the Jewish people – found our strength and marshaled the resolve and the resources to repair and restore what had been diminished and bruised in our hearts to carry forward GAJE’s cause even as Jews around the world found the courage and the voice to affirm and assert the blessing of Jewish peoplehood and of its permanence.

Anti-Israel protesters of all ages and backgrounds deny, ignore and even gaslight Hamas’ evil purpose – despite the ubiquitous evidence, including from the frequent pronouncements of their leaders – that is, the destruction of Israel and the slaughter Jews.

Hamas is the vanguard of a malevolent force of hardcore, resolute haters of Israel and of Jews. In this mission, Hamas is joined by Hezbelloh in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Islamic Brotherhood wherever they are situated. The ruling Shia theocracy of Iran is the paymaster, trainer, and director of this truly genocidal collective.  The one “holy” purpose this group shares is the murder and slaughter of Jews and the elimination of the only sovereign Jewish state on planet earth.

Despite the demonstrators disrupting normal life in the cities of the West, despite the equivocation of the leaders of Academia, despite the bad faith, distorted, “balanced” news coverage of the war, neither Hamas nor their hateful confederates are freedom fighters.

They are not liberators. They demonstrated the depth and the beastly depravity of their hatred for Jews and for Israel in the ghoulish manner in which they attempted to “liberate” the Gaza-area communities on October 7. The mass slaughter on October 7 by Hamas was in addition to their battlefield tactics of endangering, harming and even killing fellow Gazans and firing rockets primarily at Israel civilians from behind the cover of Palestinian civilians.

The ignorant and/or untruthful anti-Israel demonstrators shout that the Jews are occupiers or have no connection to the Land of Israel. Let us remind them that the very name Jew derives from the name for the place Judea, where our Jewish ancestors lived and who, in their revolutionary belief system that all humanity was created in the image of God, gave the world the Bible.

The Jews of Israel are actually fighting for their right to live sovereign in their own country on the very land on which our ancestors lived and speaking the very language they spoke.

Looking forward…

And thus,

In the year 2024, our community – along with all caring Jewish communities worldwide – joins the fight to defend Israel and the Jewish people, inspired and informed by Jewish education, by “being, knowing, doing and celebrating Jewish”. That is our task going forward into calendar 2024. It has been the task of every generation from Jewish antiquity to today.

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom. Happy, healthy, peaceful 2024.

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 29, 2023

Last month in Ottawa, Cardus senior fellow Deani Van Pelt delivered a public lecture on trends in education in Canada in 2023 in which she also reflected on the leading edge of change in education today. An adapted version of her talk was published by Cardus under the title Charting New Horizons for Independent Education in Canada.

Van Pelt introduced her presentation with the clarion assertion that “education matters for our individual well-being, our civic health and our national and global stability.” Against the current unsettling backdrop of increasingly brazen manifestations of hatred – directed against Jewish Canadians – in our public spaces and even in our public schools, Van Pelt’s statement is more a pressing prescription than it is a lofty description for the system of education in Ontario that is essential for shaping and protecting our society.

Mobs pretending to be protesters with hurt sensibilities, threaten everyone who stand in their way. The objects of the mob’s scorn are Jews, but the victims of the mob abuse are all peace-loving, law-abiding Canadians.

Noted thinker and columnist, Bret Stephens, expressed the threat posed by the bullying, dangerous mobs quite succinctly: “Antisemitism is a problem for democracy because hatred for Jews, whatever name or cause it travels under, is never a hatred for Jews only. It’s a hatred for distinctiveness: Jews as Jews in Christian lands; Israel as a Jewish state in Muslim lands. Authoritarians seek uniformity. Jews represent difference.

“Whenever antisemitism rears its head, it isn’t just Jews who are in the cross hairs. It’s freedom, education and human dignity — values all of us should share, whether you’re Jewish or not.”

And so, if we are to fight for our society – as we must – a society, in Deani Van Pelt’s words, whose educational system aims at achieving “individual well-being, civic health and national and global stability”, it is imperative that we impress upon the government the need for a new, better system of educating Ontario in this day and age.

Van Pelt’s prescription is an excellent starting point. She calls forth evidence of best educational practices throughout western jurisdictions and concludes “that we are …entering an era of education plurality, evident through a diversity of providers, approaches, learners, and funders.

She is also careful to allay the concerns of doubters and skeptics that pluralism in education is simply a formula for heightening communal differences, leading to ethnic or balkanization within our society and the retention of inter-communal enmities and/or grudges.

“Pluralism, by definition,” Van Pelt writes, “does not prioritize or prize one version of education over another. Rather, all are expected to be excellent spaces. What is key is that a variety of secular, philosophical, and religious schools can all contribute to the common good, to flourishing students, and to healthy civic formation.”

Van Pelt insists that a pluralistic approach in educational funding must focus on the common good. Pluralism in education does not simply mean freedom for communities to teach according to their respective differences, values and needs. It also means teaching with regard to the shared responsibility for the common good of civil society.

“Educational pluralism insists on quality,” Van Pelt writes. “Education is a common good in which neighbours care about the civic outcomes of schooling for one another’s children and thus includes accountability for structures for education. This civic responsibility includes strong curricula and healthy school culture, both of which are key to student success… The core of what can hold diverse communities together in pluralism…is agreed-on broad curriculum standards, a shared understanding of which core concepts are necessary to know.

“… It is a system of education in which the government funds and regulates, but does not deliver, all education options.”

“Pluralism allows for moral difference, encourages civil society to play a role in education, and insists on equity and quality.”

GAJE supports Van Pelt’s prescription for a new approach in funding and in the delivery of education. Funding will be fair, for the benefit of all Ontario families. And the curriculum will be regulated and monitored for the benefit of the common good of a society that strives without cease, to advance individual well-being, civic health and national and global stability, where anti-Semitism is overtly and publicly shunned and as Bret Stephens would therefore say, in which democracy flourishes.

•••

The adapted text of Van Pelt’s Ottawa presentation is available at:

Charting New Horizons for Independent Education in Canada

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 22, 2023

The blood-lusting fury of October 7 and its aftermath have turned our world upside down.

False parades as true. Murder as resistance. Face-covering cowards as principled protesters. As the immoral accuse the moral.

Last week, the United States vetoed a resolution in the Security Council that would have compelled Israel to cease firing at Hamas. In response, the Hamas leadership branded the United States “unethical and inhumane” and unconcerned for human rights.

For the past many weeks in the downtowns of cities across the world, anti-Israel demonstrators have brandished signs and posters accusing Israel of committing genocide while shouting for the complete liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

Ideologically oriented journalists, academics and many of their students, having lost their voices and their consciences when the Syrian regime, ISIS, the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran and other unkind rulers slaughtered their own people, nevertheless point to photos of the heart-wrenching displacement of Gazans as proof of crimes against humanity.

Right and wrong have been inverted. And we must call it out and fight against it whenever and however we can.

Three men who lived (and died) in the last century can help us do so. We must learn that they were, who they were and what they taught. And we must understand that what they taught flowed from a foundational belief in the values that derive from Jewish thought and philosophy. None was “religious” but all were proudly Jewish.

Five days after the 75^th anniversary of the proclamation of the International Declaration of Human Rights and adoption by the United Nations, on December 10, 1948, is an appropriate time to recall these men.

Hersch Lauterpacht, a British Jew, was a human rights activist and extraordinary scholar and jurist of international law. It was he who devised and brought the notion of “crimes against humanity” into the canon of justiciable international law.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew, introduced the term “genocide” and was instrumental in bringing the Convention on Genocide into the canon of jusiticiable international law.

Lauterpacht and Lemkin were contemporaries. They were born in eastern Europe and were shaped by the ideals shattering last century of the last millennium. Coincidentally, both men studied for a time in Lviv. The story of the intersection of their lives was poignantly depicted in an excellent book by Phillipe Sands published in 2016 called East West Street.

René Samuel Cassin, a French Jew, was the principal – though not the only – author of the International Declaration of Human Rights. His colleagues on the project, including Canadian jurist John Humphrey, acknowledged that the declaration “was primarily the engineering feat of René Cassin.” A veteran of World War I, Cassin fought all his life in the trenches of the struggle on behalf of the intrinsic worth and dignity of all mankind. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1968 for his lifelong efforts.

Lauterpacht, Lemkin and Cassin born on the same continent and outraged by the same forces of evil and brutality, strove with all their intellect and their might to prevent such evil from ever rising again. For a brief moment after World War II, the civilized world agreed there was a role for the rule of law in protecting all humanity. The Nuremberg trials incorporated the notion of Crimes Against Humanity. The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. And on the very next day, on December 10, 1948, the 58-member General Assembly of the United Nations passed the International Declaration of Human Rights. (There were eight abstentions and two no-shows.)

Alas, as recent and other events have sorrowfully proven, there should be no illusions about the true enforcement of human rights in international law. Despots, tyrants and terrorists pay no heed to rules other than the rule by power that secures total control over their own peoples.

None of these three great jurists were naïve about the world in which they lived or about the true reach of the legal standards they helped create to try to protect all individuals around the world. They believed in the ideal and in the humanitarian implications that spring from the belief that “all human beings are created in the image of God.”

Just like Lauterpacht, Lemkin and Cassin, we too should try to hold onto the ideal that our laws must affirm the dignity of all human life as the guiding value of our actions. The first words of the Declaration are: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Is this not the ideal way of life also taught by our Sages and reaffirmed throughout the generations in the texts of Jewish education?

In awarding the prize to Cassin in 1968, the Nobel Prize committee pointed out that “it was on just such a cold December day as this, exactly twenty years ago…a small light was lit and the moral commandments contained in the Declaration, like those written on the tablets of Moses, will in the years to come play a forceful role in reforming the conscience of man and his understanding of what is right and wrong.”

It is a good thing at this time of year to speak of small lights illuminating a large darkness. For after all, who, more than we, understands the deeper meaning of this imagery?

We must not be paralysed by the thuggish protesters who chant their lies against Israel and who abuse the historic legal principles given to the world by Lauterpacht, Lemkin and Cassin. We must find our courage and fight, as appropriate, for a society that is built upon the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 15, 2023

Exactly six years ago this week, the late Rabbi Lord Sacks participated in a debate in the British House of Lords on the role of education in building a flourishing society. (GAJE reported on Rabbi Sacks’ debate remarks after he spoke them in the House of Lords.)

In a precise four-minute speech entitled “The world our children will inherit tomorrow is born in the schools we build today”, Rabbi Sacks pleaded for an educational system that instils in children knowledge and values.

“We need to give our children an internalised moral Satellite Navigation System so that they can find their way across the undiscovered country called the future. We need to give them the strongest possible sense of collective responsibility for the common good…. There is too much “I” and too little “We” in our culture and we need to teach our children to care for others, especially those not like us.”

Rabbi Sacks words echoed in the air this week like a clanging, piercing fire alarm against the unnerving and disheartening testimony at a congressional hearing in the US by the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania. Neither could find it in her respective world view or conscience to state categorically that calling for the genocide of Jews amounted to harassment, bullying or intimidation. Each equivocated and dissembled, preferring to state that before the words amounted to intimidation they had to evolve into conduct. As if publicly, loudly advocating for the slaughter of Jews were not itself conduct. The context of the call for genocide was also determinative for the presidents in deciding whether Jews – as individuals or as a group – would feel harassed or intimidated when a mob of people or even a single person, urged others to kill Jews.

When the leaders of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, fail to grasp that actively calling for the genocide of Jews is more a matter of unpleasantness than of intimidation, we are entitled to ask of them: What sort of schools are they building today? And it thus becomes imperative to ask of our law-abiding, freedom-loving, democracy-imbued society, and indeed, of ourselves: what hate-laden world will our children inherit, as a result?

The questions are not speculative. In the aftermath of October 7, they take on a pressing urgency for us and for our society.

These are dark days, figuratively and literally. All of us who care to preserve and to strengthen our free and democratic way of life, have a role to play in lessening the darkness. The candles we light during Chanukah will be an unsubtle reminder that since we are all involved, we must all respond. We are all on the front lines in fighting to save our Judaism and our Jewishness from

those who resent us and who hate our religion and resulting peoplehood. As a result, we are all on the front lines in fighting to save our society.

The late Rabbi Joseph Kelman of Toronto often reminded congregants that the etymological root of the Hebrew word Chanukah was the same as that for chinuch, ie, education. The homiletical connection, he pointed out, was obvious: Education is – and has always been – the light by which every Jewish generation has kept aglow the eternal flame of Judaism. This is no mere rhetorical flourish. It is an observable truth that all of us – in some form and at some time – have witnessed and understood deeply in our hearts.

The responsibility of ensuring Jewish continuity is only partially fulfilled in holding dearly onto what we received from our forebears. Its fuller realization is in passing forward to our own children, before the end of our days on this earth, the values, traditions and beliefs our parents and grandparents attempted lovingly, as best they could, to entrust to us.

Since October 7, joining the battle to ensure Jewish continuity means also joining the battle to ensure the continuity of our free, tolerant, law-abiding society.

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Chag Urim Samayach. Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 8, 2023

Last week we reminded readers that GAJE awaits a ruling from the Divisional Court on a motion by Ontario seeking permission to appeal the 46-page decision of Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou that allowed GAJE’s case to proceed through the courts to a hearing on its merits.

In the document it filed with the Divisional Court, Ontario argues in various iterations that Judge Papageorgiou misapplied the principles of law that governed Ontario’s attempt to throw GAJE’s case out of court before it could be heard on the merits.

In response, of course, GAJE’s legal team argues that it is Ontario, NOT Judge Papageorgiou, that incorrectly applies the legal principles that determine whether GAJE should be allowed to argue its case in all of the circumstances of 2023.

The following is excerpted from the Overview of the argument presented to the court by GAJE’s lawyers in response to the Attorney General of Ontario. It explains, in broad terms, why Ontario is wrong in impugning the correctness of Judge Papageorgiou’s decision.

“2. Ontario brought a motion to strike the application, arguing that it was plain and obvious the Applicants had no reasonable prospect of success. Justice Papageorgiou dismissed Ontario’s motion. In her decision, [Justice Papageorgiou] found that it was not plain and obvious that the Applicants could not meet the test set out by the Supreme Court of Canada…..based on the overall combined impact of a number of changes in circumstances as well as developments in the law since the decision in Adler v. Ontario.. was released. Accordingly, [Justice Papageorgiou] found that there is a reasonable argument to be made that the factors raised by the Applicants fundamentally shifts how jurists would understand a number of legal issues including:

a) Whether section 93 of the Constitution and section 29 of the Charter should be interpreted so as to immunize government action from Charter scrutiny in light of international treaty obligations, the duty of state neutrality, and the section 93A amendment;

b) Whether the failure to fund other faith-based schools violates the Applicants’ freedom of religion in light of the principle of state neutrality, increased existential threats to the Jewish community, increased emphasis on diversity and minority rights, and the Vriend decision;

c) Whether the failure to fund other faith-based schools violates the Applicants’ equality rights in light of international treaties which engage the principle of non-discrimination in education, the principle of conformity as well as other advancements in international law;

d) If there is a basis to revisit (a), and the scope of Charter rights, and if a violation is found to occur, the analysis under section 1 of the Charter will be much richer now than it was in 1996 when Adler was released.

3. The decision of [Justice Papgeorgiou] involved a careful analysis of the Supreme Court precedents referred to by Ontario, including an analysis of the application of the…. tests to the facts and law presented in this case. Rather than contradicting these precedents, [Justice Papageorgiou] applied these principles. The discussion regarding the application of international law and the corresponding principles of interpretation will all be weighed and determined by the judge on the Application. Justice Papgerorgiou’s decision merely suggests that the Application is not doomed to fail on these grounds – that it is not plain and obvious that the Application will fail.”

It is important to bear in mind: Judge Papageorgiou was not asked to make a decision about the fairness of Ontario’s educational funding policies. She was asked to decide whether GAJE should be allowed the opportunity to argue in court that Ontario’s educational funding policies are unfair and thus, possibly, illegal in the year 2023. And she determined, indeed, GAJE should be allowed that opportunity.

The shocking, unfolding aftermath of hatred toward Jews and Israel on the streets of Canada since October 7, makes quite clear that the long-term, permanent stakes involved in GAJE’s application are very high.

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

December 1, 2023

As all of us know, neither war, tragedy nor travesty arrests the rise and fall of the sun. And so, we must still keep our eyes on the legal process which GAJE has launched against the Government of Ontario, even as the State of Israel defends itself against those who would destroy it and as the Jews of the world defend themselves against those who would harm, if not destroy, us also.

On August 20, Judge Eugenia Papageorgiou delivered a 46-page ruling that GAJE’s application for fairness in educational funding should proceed to a full hearing despite Ontario’s attempt to have it thrown out of court before such a hearing could take place.

Unhappy that the court had decided against it, Ontario filed a motion on September 5 to the Divisional Court seeking leave to appeal Judge Papageorgiou’s ruling. As of next week, the Attorney General for Ontario and GAJE have filed the documents that the Court will rely upon to rule upon the AG’s motion.

After Judge Papageorgiou’s decision was released, Allan Kaufman, the noted lawyer, lecturer, professor, labour arbitrator wrote a brief op-ed explaining the background to and the import of GAJE’s application to an unaware public. October 7 and its aftermath, and other considerations however, prevented a timely publication of Kaufman’s essay.

To bring GAJE’s lawsuit back into the communal spotlight, we now publish Kaufman’s article.

•••

“The Atlantic provinces of Canada refrain from providing government funding for any religious schools. I respect that point of view, and no court can force them to do otherwise. Quebec plus the four western Canadian provinces provide some funding to all of the religious schools in those five provinces. Ontario is an outlier. The Ontario government is the only province or state in all of North America that fully funds not only its public schools, but also the schools of only one religion (Catholic), but no other religion. When I tell my American friends about this anomaly, they think I must be making it up, since it is well established in law throughout North America that all governments must refrain from discriminating in favour of only one religious denomination.

How does Ontario get away with it? The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Adler case in 1996 that Ontario’s funding of Catholic schools, but no other religious schools, is legally justified under the Constitution of Canada. A condition of Ontario and Quebec joining Canada in 1867 was that the Canadian Constitution would require Quebec to protect its Protestant minority schools, and Ontario would protect its Catholic minority schools.  In the Adler decision, many of the justices waxed eloquent about this “grand constitutional compromise,’ and how it must now be immune from any challenge under Canada’s antidiscrimination laws.

But then a funny thing happened.  Less than a year after the Supreme Court of Canada had decided Adler, the Quebec government repealed the constitutional protection that its Protestant schools had enjoyed since 1867, and the Canadian parliament approved that constitutional amendment.  That left the “grand constitutional compromise” (on which the Adler decision had been based) in tatters. That may mean Ontario’s refusal to extend funding to any religious schools other than the Catholics, can no longer be shielded from antidiscrimination and freedom of religion scrutiny.

As a result, an Ontario Jewish community group called Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (“GAJE”) has brought a recent court challenge. GAJE submitted a study to the court to show why Jewish day school education is essential for the long-term survival of the Jewish community. The Judge in the GAJE case pointed out that GAJE’s court case does “not seek any order or declaration which could adversely affect the funding of Roman Catholic schools. Rather [GAJE] seeks to obtain the same benefit the Roman Catholic schools and public schools receive…”

The Ontario government tried to knock the GAJE case out of court at its inception by asserting that GAJE had no reasonable prospect of success – since the Adler case had already decided the same issue back in 1996. That same argument had always been a winner for the previous McGuinty government of Ontario any time any religious group in Ontario had sought to challenge Ontario’s school funding. In the GAJE case, however, Justice Papageorgiou of the Ontario Supreme Court recently ruled that GAJE’s court case could proceed forward against Ontario for a final decision. Not only is the “grand constitutional compromise” that underpinned the Adler decision no longer in place, but after Adler had been decided the courts articulated a new doctrine where funding of only one religion would violate the principle of “state neutrality” on religions. The Adler decision may no longer be consistent with this new principle, wrote Justice Papageorgiou.

Furthermore, GAJE’s international law lawyer, David Matas, demonstrated in court that the funding of only Catholic schools to the exclusion of all of Ontario’s many other religious schools, is not in conformity with a number of international treaties signed by Canada that prohibit government discrimination in favour of any one religion. Justice Papageorgiou suggested in the GAJE case that Ontario may need to bring its laws into conformity with those international obligations. This point had never been considered when the Adler case was decided in 1996. This does not mean that Ontario needs to repeal its funding for Catholic schools, but instead to extend funding to all other religious schools – just as we have seen that the Provinces of Quebec and all four of the western Canadian provinces currently do.

All of the many other non-Catholic religion schools in Ontario, including the Protestant religious schools, have been relegated to second class status in Ontario for many decades. All of those other religious schools would benefit if the Jewish community is eventually successful in the GAJE court case. Since such a court decision would not threaten the funding of Catholic schools in Ontario, the Ontario government should do the right thing now by extending funding for all religious schools in the province before the courts end up dragging the province kicking and screaming into the 21^st century.”

•••

As soon as GAJE receives the decision of the Divisional Court, we will report it to you.

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 24, 2023

Since Hamas’ onslaught of October 7 and the alarming, unsettling, enraging reaction by so many individuals and institutions at home and abroad, to Israel’s fighting back against the genocidal perpetrators, most of us have sought “navigational guidance” from selected commentators and commentaries to help us find our way, if not also, our balance through these darkening days.

In this update we call readers’ attention to one such commentary that is superbly informative and strengthening. It is a podcast from Sapir Conversations, presented on October 20 entitled, American Jewry and the War in Israel: What Do We Do Now? The participants were Bret Stephens, columnist, writer, Editor-in-Chief, Sapir: A quarterly journal of ideas for a thriving Jewish future, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, and Rachel Fish, co-founder of the non-profit, Boundless, discuss the geopolitical impact of the war in Israel, the implications for the American Jewish community, and our collective responsibilities during this crisis and beyond.

The podcast is 1 hour and 16 minutes in length. Rabbi Cosgrove moderates an electric discussion with Stephens and Fish that is wide-ranging, substantive, impassioned and direct. It is an outstretched hand extended to a shell-shocked community. We will not attempt to summarize the podcast. It contains too much that is worthy. Rather, we will provide two nuggets on the subject of the difficulties facing Jewish youth on campus.

Fish synthesized the needs of our children on campus as that of content and courage. “Students need to know content” and then be able to deliver what they know, Fish said. “They need an operating system that is one of Jewishness. But it all begins before they walk onto campus” she emphasized.

Stephens forthrightly called for the Jewish community to create new “institutions” to replace the existing ones that have clearly failed to be true to the values they purport to teach. He pleaded with philanthropists to be as entrepreneurial, i.e., risk-taking and purposive in their philanthropy as they are in business. And then, picking up on Fish’s cue regarding an operating system that is one of Jewishness, Stephens said “the biggest thing that an engaged Jewish community can do is make it possible for every Jewish family to afford a first-class K-12 Jewish education. Nothing better guarantees a proud Jewish individual.”

With this bold, unequivocal formulation, Stephens echoed what community leaders here understand and are trying assiduously to achieve. It also echoes GAJE’s oft’ expressed mission.

•••

Readers can listen to the podcast at:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-jewry-and-the-war-in-israel-what-do-we-do-now/id1583771945?i=1000632045133

•••

Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 17, 2023

Twenty years ago, on November 13, 2003, the following editorial entitled, From the past, a warning, appeared in The CJN. That it is as relevant today as it was then, is piercingly sad.

•••

“Jewish history is such that there is nothing left to shock our sensibilities. Jews have been vilified, abused and maligned in every imaginable manner of human depredation. The horrific, dark nadir of depredation came in the last century.

Sixty-five years ago this week, on Nov. 9-10, violence against the Jews of Europe became more than an ominous Nazi threat. It became real, very horribly real.

In his book, The Holocaust, (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), eminent historian Martin Gilbert described some of the events that unfolded on that terrible day. “Bonfires were lit in every neighbourhood where Jews lived. On them were thrown prayer books, Torah scrolls and countless volumes of philosophy, history and poetry. In thousands of streets, Jews were chased, reviled and beaten up.

“In 24 hours of street violence, 91 Jews were killed. More than 30,000 – one in 10 of the remaining Jewish population – were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Before most of them were released two to three months later, as many as 1,000 had been murdered, 244 of them in Buchenwald. A further 8,000 Jews were evicted from Berlin: children from orphanages, patients from hospitals, old people from old peoples’ homes. There were many suicides, 10 at least in Nuremburg, but it was forbidden to publish death notices in the press.

“It was not by the killing however, not by the arrests or the suicides, that the night of Nov. 9 was to be remembered. During the night, as well as breaking into tens of thousands of shops and homes, the Stormtroops set fire to 191 synagogues; or, if it was thought that fire might endanger nearby buildings, smashed the synagogues as thoroughly as possible with hammers and axes. The destruction of the synagogues led the Nazis to call that night Kristallnacht, or night of broken glass: words chosen deliberately to mock and belittle.”

It is important for us to recall that day. Seven years later, European Jewry would be almost entirely destroyed, and millions of men and women from the Allied fighting forces, underground and partisan fighters would sacrifice their lives in a cruel, harsh war to defeat Kristallnacht’s planners and executioners. Remembering, therefore, is a profound moral and existential debt we owe to the victims of the Shoah and to the vanquishers of the Nazis.

One of the most unsettling aspects of the terrorist war launched against Israel some three years ago, is the anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in Europe in its wake and that appears ubiquitous, alas, throughout the Muslim world. Indeed, in many respects, Muslim authorities have simply swallowed whole the crude anti-Semitism of Medieval Europe and are now spitting out the familiar, bitter bile at their own peoples.

Although some people today are very worried about signs and images of anti-Semitism they see recurring from the last century, there is no parallel. But we are wise to view the events of 65 years ago as a warning, lest we become complacent.”

•••

Despite our knowledge of Jewish history, it appears that a great deal yet remains within the heated hatred of Jews that can indeed shock our sensibilities anew. The events of October 7 proved this with terrible force.

But because of our knowledge of Jewish history, we know that the best way to respond to the haters who would deprive Jews of our lives and the world of Jews, is for Jews to celebrate our Judaism and for us all to “do Jewish”, for our own sakes as well as for the sake of the world.

•••

Legal scholar and human rights activist, Adam Hummel, ties the bloodletting of Kristallnacht to that of October 7 in a moving article on Catch entitled, Commemorating Pogroms.

Readers can find the article at:

https://catchjcp.substack.com/p/commemorating-pogroms?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=rvbar&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 10, 2023

The State of Israel is fighting against foes who seek its annihilation. Anyone who characterizes the October 7 war as one of resistance to the “occupation” is, of course, lying. Israel did not occupy Gaza on October 7, nor has it since the summer of 2005. 

Israel’s foes along the Gaza border are the trained murderers of Hamas and the theocratic rulers of Iran who underwrite Hamas’ terror. Iran’s other surrogates – in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen – are also enthusiastic participants in Hamas’ declared mission of “wiping the Jewish state off the map”.

Hamas is the vanguard of a malevolent force of hardcore, resolute haters of Israel and of Jews. They are not freedom fighters. They are not liberators. Their mission statement makes this plain. They demonstrated the depth and the beastly depravity of their hatred for Jews and for Israel in the ghoulish manner in which they attempted to “liberate” the Gaza-area communities on October 7. The mass slaughter on October 7 was in addition to Hamas’ fighting protocols that demands rockets be fired at Israeli civilians from behind the cover of Palestinian civilians.

The truth about Hamas should be easily obvious to people of “ordinary” conscience or moral compass. Sadly however, many people are blind to the obvious. Worse, many people deny it. Many more actually campaign to distort and rewrite the obvious.

After the first wave of revulsion with the October 7 horror, followed immediately by the eruption of anti-Jewish protests around the world, members of the Jewish community expected lay and professional faith leaders to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jews of Israel.

For the most part, however, the leaders of the other faiths have remained silent. That silence has been a shivering cold blow to Jews throughout the world, adding to our increasing sense of isolation.

But not all faith leaders have been silent.

Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett, the Faith Communities Program Director at Cardus, effectively “shouted” his moral outrage against Hamas’ vile murderous sadism. In an article entitled Failing to Condemn the Murder of Innocents Is a Sign of Moral Rot, originally published in The Hub on October 18, 2023, Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett wrote: “Prudence rightly exercised shapes my conscience so that I recognize that celebrating (or being silent about) mass atrocities against Jews is abhorrent and beneath me as a human being. Fortitude shapes my conscience such that I stand up and speak out courageously against evil and lies wherever I encounter them, for the good of our human life together. Justice is what I aim to promote when I see these deep ills of society and desire their remedy. Let us stem the moral rot we see and begin to build true solidarity in a more human culture in this country.”

We commend and thank Father Bennett for speaking out so forcefully, so publicly and with such moral gravity. We hope his voice will be heard by other faith leaders and persuade them to speak out in similar fashion.

Father Bennett’s article is available at:

Failing to Condemn the Murder of Innocents Is a Sign of Moral Rot

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Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

November 3, 2023

Very often in this weekly update, as readers know, GAJE has written forcefully, if not also pleadingly, beseeching the Government of Ontario to end its unfair educational funding policies. We have been critical of Stephen Lecce, the Minister of Education for maintaining a system that no longer hues true to the values of Ontario in 2023.

Today we commend Minister Lecce. We thank him and we praise him.

Last week in the Legislature, during a debate on Motion No. 38 Defence of Israel, Minister Lecce delivered a resolute, ringing, principled statement about the justice of the war Israel is now fighting against Hamas.

Minister Lecce’s remarks deserve wide distribution. They should be studied and discussed in the classroom and in the corridors of government throughout Canada. His speech in the Legislature contains many important lessons. We highlight only three and provide brief excerpts from each.

His description of the true nature of Hamas.

There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Hamas has dehumanized an entire people and committed a pogrom against defenceless civilians. It also oppresses the Palestinians. This is a struggle of right versus wrong, of good versus evil.

His criticism of the supporters and promoters of Hamas, especially here in Ontario.

The failure or refusal to recognize the Hamas bloodlust validates terror. It demonstrates a lack of moral courage and a shocking indifference to Jewish victimization. There is no justification to the barbarism of Hamas.

His prescription for action by people who care about protecting democracy

We have to learn from humanity’s worst chapters if we wish to avoid them again.

We have to speak with moral decency, with moral courage.

We will not be bystanders. We will use our power for good. We must be on guard for all manners of hate and fight hate and haters.

“Never again” is our collective legacy to the generations to come. For the sake of freedom, human rights and democracy, I ask us all: Do we possess the moral courage to do what is right even if it is not easy? Do we possess the moral courage to stand up to evil?

We are standing for fundamental Canadian values that transcend partisan politics. We must pick the right side of human history.

Again, we thank and praise Minister Lecce for setting the example of moral courage and clarity.

GAJE urges everyone to view Minister Lecce address the Legislature.  It can be seen at:

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Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Lives and will always.

Shabbat shalom

Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)

October 27, 2023