The cycle begins anew next week for those of our people who read the Torah in synagogue on an annual basis. Just as we invoked the Shehechiyanu blessing at the outset of the Tishrei holidays, we will do so again at their conclusion when we return again and as ever, to “In The Beginning.”

In his column last week in The CJN, Michael Diamond wrote about the resilience of the Jewish people. He emphasized the remarkable nature of this resilience in light of the longevity of the tenacious enmity directed at Jews throughout the millennia.

“To be a Jew is to aspire to lofty goals,” Diamond succinctly wrote.

Those lofty goals, of course, are the mission and purpose of Jewish life. They derive from the values and ideal that are the foundation stone our religion. With those values and the resulting goals in mind, Diamond explained our resilience.

“One thing is clear: we do not survive by accommodating, by compromising our values or by shrinking from the challenges.” This is well said by Diamond.

What needs also to be said is that it is primarily through Jewish education at school and example and reinforcement at home that our values are transmitted from one generation to the next.

The final comment however, as we say Shehechiyanu is that Jewish education must be affordable if there is to be any education at all for the largest number of our children.

The Diamond article is available at: https://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/opinions/diamond-the-resiliency-of-jews-and-the-tenacity-of-our-enemies

•••

Shabbat Shalom GAJE,

October 18, 2019

The Jewish News Syndicate recently published an article by award-winning reporter and children’s book author Faygie Holt “If you lower it, will they come? The high costs of Jewish day school.”

The article is a mini-tour-of-the-horizon of efforts in diverse, non-Orthodox day schools in the United States to increase enrolment by drastically reducing tuitions and then ensuring the long-term sustainability of those schools with the new tuitions and enrolments.

One of the initiatives that Holt features is “Open Door,” at the San Diego Jewish Academy (SDJA). Open Door lowers the cost of tuition for students entering kindergarten and ninth grade at the K-12 pluralistic schoolboy half. The reduced tuition continues for the next four years. The school also offer a discounted tuition rate for Jewish communal employees who might otherwise not be able to afford to send their kids there.

“We studied this forever and did a lot of research with different groups, and we learned that the biggest factor that prevented people from even touring a Jewish school in the Carmel Valley was the [tuition] sticker shock,” said head of school Chaim Heller. “Our data showed that if we could lower our sticker price point to between $10,000 and $15,000, depending on the grade, we would have more than 1,100 local families who would give our school a look.” And once they looked, Heller said, they might be more inclined to give the school a try. Heller told Holt that the enrolment at (SDJA) enjoyed “a significant increase over last year.”

The link between tuition levels and enrolment price has been empirically proven by the successful experiment two years ago in the GTA by the drastic reduction in tuition by Tanenbaum CHAT. Indeed Holt points to CHAT’s positive experience in her article.

We commend the article to readers for its broad examination and summary of the enrolment situations of non-Orthodox day schools in the United States. Not all of Holt’s observations apply to our situation in the GTA. But the information in the article is worthy as a base of comparison to the current efforts underway in our community to bring down tuitions and ensure the permanent futures of the schools. The article also contains some important nuggets about the importance of day schools in securing a permanent Jewish future in our respective communities.

Holt quotes Jack Wertheimer, the Joseph and Martha Mendelson Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary who asks: “Is there a communal will to identify Jewish day schools as a major asset of the community, especially given the data showing that Jewish-day school alumni are among the most active participants in Jewish communal life, serving not just as followers but leaders in the community?”

And for parents, Wertheimer says, ask them to come to the school and check out the vibe. “See the faces of our children and their relationships with their teachers and their classmates,” he says. “Then decide if this is the wholesome environment you’d like your child to be placed in.”

Wertheimer believes that with thoughtfully directed initiatives by the schools and their respective communities, the decline in enrolment can be reversed.

GAJE agrees with Prof. Wertheimer. Let us all prove him to be right.

The Holt article is available at:

https://www.jns.org/if-you-lower-it-will-they-come-the-high-costs-of-jewish-day-school/

•••

Shabbat Shalom

GAJE, October 11, 2019

The CJN recently published a comment by Josh Leiblein entitled “A Guide to Jeiwish Issues in the Federal Election”. In his commentary Leiblein reflected upon why some of the issues of concern to our community seem to resonate with the wider community while other issues do not. He suggested that the framing of the issue is determinative of its broad acceptance in the Canadian demographic landscape, ie, whether the issue is seen as narrowly particular to the Jewish community or as more widely universal to Canadians.

He challenged community leaders to “make the case that our community’s intentions are in the best interests of all Canadians, not just Jewish Canadians.”

Leiblein was correct in his analysis.

However in citing the lack of fair funding for faith-based schools as an issue perceived as distinctively Jewish and thus a “loser for the Canadian Jewish community,” Leiblein somewhat overstates the matter. For the issue is a “loser” only in Ontario.

All the western provinces and Quebec long ago decided to provide public funds – to some extent – to faith-based and secular independent schools. Apart from the Atlantic Provinces, where numbers do not warrant such interventions, Ontario is the outlier in Canada in refusing to extend funding to faith-based independent schools. 

The rest of Canada – again except in Atlantic Canada – understands, accepts and adopts the notion that helping fund at least part of the general studies portion of independent schools is entirely in accord with the values and principles entrenched in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a minimum testament to fairness. It happens also to be ultimately more economically efficient even as it creates conditions for better educational outcomes.

With the proper, factual framing of the issue, it is highly questionable whether the Ontario electorate would today reject funding some portion of independent schools, as it did more than 12 years ago in 2007.

Educational funding falls within provincial not federal jurisdiction. Thus the issues does not arise in the upcoming federal election. But readers must realize, nevertheless, as GAJE has been saying since its founding and as experience in other provinces persuasively shows, extending some funding to the general studies curriculum of independent schools is indeed, as Leiblein wrote, “in the best interests of all Canadians, not just Jewish Canadians.”

The full Leiblein commentary is available at: https://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/opinions/lieblein-a-guide-to-jewish-issues-in-the-federal-election

•••

Shabbat Shalom

Gmar chatimah tovah

GAJE, October 4, 2019

In the past we have referred to a volume of essays that resulted from a conference titled Creating the Jewish Future which was held at the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University in 1996. It is fitting, in our last update of calendar 5779, as we restate both our purpose and our resolve, to refer once again to this publication.

In the Afterward of the volume, Prof. Irving Abella wrote the following: “It seemed self-evident that the major challenge to our Jewish leadership in the next generation should be building a Jewish community that is not simply concerned with survival, but one that is creative and attractive to our children – a community with substance and content, a community that stresses not only memory but other important values of our traditions – primarily social justice, equity, compassion and spirituality. We pride in its activities and achievements. We will have to find ways to convert alienation to action and passivity to pride, the pride of being possessors of a great legacy, a legacy which has meaning for today and beyond.”

Prof. Abella’s observation is eloquent and on the mark. It is fair to ask: Have we succeeded in the intervening 23 years since the conference or in the 20 years since the proceedings of Creating the Jewish Future were published, to give it true meaning?

I suspect that giving Prof. Abella’s exhortation true meaning is an ongoing task for each generation and has always been so – with adjustments according to the circumstances of the times and place – in every generation. That means it falls to all of us in each of our homes and in our respective social circles to contribute our own parts to the collective communal legacy.

The final instruction on “creating a legacy which has meaning for today and beyond” goes to Prof. Michael Brown who was then the director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at York University. His words still guide us.

North American Jewry “cannot allow blind forces to determine its destiny. It must create its own future out of the legacy of the past and the realities of the present. As Morton Weinfeld notes…the future is not determined; it need not be accepted passively; it can be shaped and created. But if the community is to take its fate into its own hands, then present reality and future goals must be clearly defined and squarely faced.”

Jewish education, in all its peoplehood-sustaining manifestations, is the key to creating the legacy Prof. Abella described. Therefore we must ensure that Jewish education, in all its manifestations, must be accessible and thus, affordable.

•••

Shabbat Shalom

Shana tovah umetukah

GAJE, September 27, 2019

The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) this week featured an article entitled “The unequal cost of Jewish education in Canada.” It is a source of important information. The reporter, Alex Rose, deftly covered the three most compelling aspects of Jewish education, namely, (1) its importance, (2) enrolment is directly tied to tuition, and (3) one may presume, as a matter of fairness and the pursuit of educational excellence, the largest provinces in the country – apart from Ontario – do provide some assistance to the independent (Jewish and non-Jewish) schools. 

Daniel Held, the executive director of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education, told The CJN that Grade 9 enrolment at TanenbaumCHAT, the community high school, will likely exceed 300 students. This compares with a figure of 175 students two years ago before a generous and innovative philanthropic intervention reduced tuition by about one third for a trial period of four years.

“It clearly points to the fact that there’s pent-up demand,” Held said. “With the right initiatives and the right philanthropy, we can enable that [enrolment in Jewish school] to happen. It’s about serving those families who really want to have a Jewish education for their kids, and making that possible for them.”

Held also astutely explained why it is important to get as many children as possible into the schools. “It looks toward the future and says, ‘How can we have the strongest, most vibrant, most vital Jewish community?’ And decades, if not centuries, of research and experience shows that by educating our kids today, we strengthen the community of the future, we create both a knowledgeable and passionate community and we also create empowered leaders,” he said. “That’s why investing in education is so important for UJA and for our community in general.”

GAJE unreservedly supports and encourages every philanthropic effort that brings more children into our schools. Another such worthy effort is to bring about a change in Ontario’s education funding policies. As Jeffrey Stutz, one of GAJE’s founding members told The CJN reporter, “If Ontario funded even half the cost of general studies in the day schools, the impact would be huge. It’s not a radical idea – five other provinces in Canada do this,” he said.”

Our community has the ability and the strength to make Jewish education forever.  Let us all mobilize to make it happen.

•••

The full CJN article can be found at:

•••https://www.cjnews.com/living-jewish/the-unequal-cost-of-jewish-education-in-canada

Shabbat Shalom

GAJE

September 6, 2019

Rabbi Jay Kelman – the founder of Torah in Motion, a teacher at TanenbaumCHAT and one of GAJE’s founding members – has written a persuasive article in which he points to the irrefutable power of pointedly directed and pointedly monitored philanthropy in bringing back students into the classrooms of our Jewish schools where enrolment has fallen over the years.

The article appeared in Lehrhaus as a response to an earlier article that suggested reduced financial investment by philanthropists in schools was a more likely guarantor of the survival of the various schools in our embattled Jewish day school system.

Rabbi Kelman posits the nub of his thesis at the outset of his commentary “It is undoubtedly true that the cost per student has risen dramatically over the years. However, asking donors to stop giving money to schools, thereby forcing serious cost cutting, is extremely unlikely to help, and quite certain to make the problem worse.”

He then sets about proving his thesis by testing various cost-cutting scenarios, relying on published figures for local and national educational costs. He demonstrates the case of a school whose costs are reduced by 50%. Then Rabbi Kelman poignantly asks: “But who would want to go to such a school? And for those who do what kind of an education would they receive? You get what you pay for, and quality costs money.

“Even with a 50% cut in costs, the annual tuition bill for a family with four children—a typical size of a Modern Orthodox family— would still be somewhere between $40,000-$50,000 a year. With no philanthropic dollars coming in, many families would still be forced out of the day school system. And all the more so if those families have five or even six children. Asking donors to no longer support our schools is not the solution to the tuition crisis.”

Indeed, Rabbi Kelman makes the eloquent case for seeking more assistance from our community-minded philanthropists. “It is here that philanthropists can make a real difference. But instead of asking donors to stop giving money, schools should ask for more money and greater donor oversight. 

“An example of the power of this type of giving is clearly demonstrated at TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto, where two philanthropists donated $15 million on condition that tuition would be lowered from $28,500 to $18,500 a year over five years. The $15 million covered only about half of the lost tuition, forcing the school to find ways to remain eligible for the money. One of the beautiful aspects of the plan was that the school was free to reach its target tuition in any way it wanted. The donors provided the funding, and let the educators decide how to best meet their conditions.

The results speak for themselves. After years of declining enrolment, the tide has turned. Because of the foresight of two philanthropists, the incoming Grade 9 class has gone from 198 students (before the gift) to 298 students in just one year, and to over 300 students for this upcoming year.” 

We re-emphasize Rabbi Kelman’s conclusions. The results do indeed speak for themselves. The reduced tuition has led to dramatic increases in enrolment.

These new enrolment figures are amazing and deeply encouraging, Moreover they are suggestive of a strong, knowledgeable, committed generation growing into and steering our Jewish future.

••• Rabbi Kelman’s commentary can be found at:

https://www.thelehrhaus.com/commentary/philanthropy-works-we-just-need-more-of-it/#em

•••

Shabbat Shalom

GAJE August 23, 2019