From time to time, GAJE points out that communities across North America are mobilizing to strengthen the Jewish educational and day school system. We do so again with this update.

Paul Bernstein, the founding CEO of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, published an article on the eJewishPhilanthropy site entitled, Unlocking the Potential of Jewish Day Schools.

Bernstein restates the proposition that is at the heart of the campaign to make Jewish education affordable. “Strong Jewish day schools create strong Jewish communities.”

He then logically asks the vital question: “How can we unlock the potential of the inherent link between communities and Jewish day schools to secure a strong Jewish future?”

The article introduces a five-year strategic plan by Prizmah entitled B’Yachad/Together: Towards a Vibrant Future for Jewish Day Schools.

Bernstein points out that the “blueprint is built from an understanding of that deep and powerful school-community connection – the stronger our schools are, the stronger our communities, and vice-versa. Today’s Jewish day school students, and those who follow in their footsteps, are precious resources.”

The lay and professional leaders of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education (in the GTA) are fully engaged in the effort to strengthen our educational system by making it affordable to all families that seek it for their children and then by making the system permanently sustainable.

We will all have a role to play in this. When the wide Jewish community is asked to participate in and assist in the essential task of ensuring the Jewish future, we hope members of the community will respond wholeheartedly and purposefully by plunging, so to speak, into the deep end of “rescue” rather than by merely dipping our toes tentatively along the stony, shallow shoreline of indifference.•••

Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

The reason GAJE was formed some three years ago was to help the community make Jewish education affordable to the many families in our community for whom it has become increasingly out of reach financially. In the process, we have also commented from time to time that the companion issue to the affordability of the education is its overall excellence.

An article appeared this week on the eJewish Philanthropy website that focuses the discussion about Jewish day school education on this very subject. Entitled, CAJE-Miami: A Decade of Lessons Learned, the authors Valerie Mitrani and Julie Lambert ask the question: “What is the point of sustainability and affordability if Jewish day schools aren’t at the forefront of education, providing learning environments that offer leading pedagogies and opportunities that meet the needs of our students and families?”

Of course, GAJE agrees with this proposition.

Mitrani and Lambert state “in a world full of options, we have a moral obligation as a Jewish community to ensure that Jewish day school students experience a high quality education.” And they add: “the single most important school-based factor impacting student learning is the teacher. The second most important factor is the principal.”

GAJE also agrees with these statements.

Thankfully, in the GTA, we are indeed able to say that the schools do provide excellent education in general studies and in Jewish studies, within of course, their particular respective philosophical Judaic outlooks. Of course, behavioural and pedagogical issues do arise in each school that are particular to individual students and that may make a child’s experience in the school difficult. We would never deny things we know to be true.

But on balance, the evidence persists that the day schools do offer a high quality educational experience. We must emphasize and re-emphasize this fact to the Jewish public. The teachers and the principals understand that they – the human factor – are the irreplaceable centers of each school.

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Some weeks ago, we helped announce in this space the opening of a new pedagogically blended learning high school slated to open in the GTA in September 2019. The school organizers are holding an Open House on Nov 25, 7 pm in the Lipa Green Building, 4600 Bathurst Street.

Curious parents of prospective students and of course, students themselves are invited to attend to hear more about ADRABA: meet with the school’s originators, ask questions, discuss their plans and aspirations and experience a sample lesson intended for incoming students.

More info about ADRABA is available at ADRABA.ca.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Earlier this week the Board of Directors of The Leo Baeck Day School announced its decision to close its campus in Thornhill at the end of this school year. The president of the school’s board, Dr. Lisa Dack, succinctly and accurately described the emotion that accompanied the decision. “Today is an incredibly sad day for Leo Baeck, as well as the entire Jewish community, which is losing another Jewish day school in York Region.”

The closing of Leo Baeck north is woefully unwelcome news.

The hopes and dreams of building in Thornhill a diverse, pluralistic Jewish Community where options for families to choose from a variety of day school offerings are slipping away. That “variety” today comprises three schools: Netivot, Eitz Chaim and Bialik.

But this is not the last word on Jewish education in Vaughan.

There are many reasons that explain the rise and fall of Jewish education in Thornhill. The pre-eminent one however, is the cost of tuition. This was confirmed not long ago in a poll conducted for the Federation.

GAJE is working hand in hand with UJA Federation and CIJA to create a lifeline for the schools and families. We must all do so.

We all recognize that for Jews in the Greater Toronto area saving our day schools is and will be the top priority. Federation has publicly stated that enabling more children to enrol in Jewish education is the compelling issue for our future as a vibrant, diverse Jewish community.

Combined with the effort to make education more affordable, we must now also speak directly and effusively about the excellence and importance of Jewish education. And so we shall.

The task for all of us is clear. It is also urgent.

We have the ability to reverse the trend of school closures and to create, instead, a new trend of having to accommodate an increasing demand for enrolment in our Jewish schools.

But first we must find the will.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

The General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) convened this year in Jerusalem. As part of the proceedings last week, JFNA Chairman Richard V. Sandler interviewed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The interview covered a lot of ground, some of which, as we know at the moment, is a bit shaky between large swaths of North American Jews and the government of Israel. The prime minister wished to project the attitude that all problems between the largest Diaspora community and the Jewish state were resolvable. There was one key issue, however, that Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasized as being pre-eminent among his concerns for the future.

“What I’m concerned with when it comes to the Jewish people, is the loss of identity”, the prime minister said. “It’s not the question of the Western Wall or the question of conversion; we’ll overcome that. It’s the loss of identity.”

In responding to his interviewer, Prime Minister Netanyahu said the following:

“Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch wrote recently: “Those who are not concerned with Jewish survival will not survive as Jews.” There’s some basic truth to that.

“Jewish survival is guaranteed in the Jewish state if we defend our state, but we have to also work at the continuity of Jewish communities in the world by developing Jewish education, the study of Hebrew, having the contact of young Jews coming to Israel.

“We need an approach in the internet age to young Jewish men and women, to Jewish children around the world, so that they understand that their own future as Jews depends on continuous identity.

“It’s protecting Jewish identity and developing Jewish consciousness that is the most important thing. It transcends politics; it touches on the foundations of history. So I hope that we do this.

“This is what I think we’re here for. We are one people – let’s make sure that every Jewish child in the world knows how proud they should be to be Jews.”

In placing Jewish identity – i.e., Jewish education – as the core issue of the Jewish future, Prime Minister was echoing many other leading Jewish figures in Israel. The true strength of the Jewish people is in our embrace of who we are. Passing that embrace forward to the next generations can be achieved only through education.

But Jewish education must be available to as many Jewish children as possible. For that to happen, the education must be affordable. That is and has been GAJE’s message.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

An article in last week’s Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters News – since posted on GAJE’s website – describes how the Jewish community of Myrtle Beach innovated a solution to the problem of the unaffordability of Jewish education there.

The Future is Here: Tuition-Free Day School in Myrtle Beach, by Tzipora Reitman, describes the creation of Jewish Education Myrtle Beach (JEMB), a program launched in 2015 that she says “is giving 75 percent of the city’s Jewish children a first-rate, tuition-free Jewish education.”

Reitman interviewed Leah Aizenman and her husband Rabbi Doron Aizenman, the co-founders of the Chabad Jewish Academy and the driving forces behind Jewish Education initiative. Their goal “is to educate the entire community about the importance of Jewish education, and for the community to want to share in this responsibility.”

The importance of Jewish education to the entire community has translated into a broad effort to involve as many individuals as possible to actually make Jewish education not only affordable, but actually free for the families that wish it for their children.

The approach is direct. It conforms with the norms of Jewish life all through the ages.

“To finance free tuition at the day school, each household in the Jewish community, whether they have five children in the school, one, or none – whether they are parents or grandparents of alumni, or have no children at all – is asked to become a JEMB Member for $1,000. Seventy families, representing nearly 80 percent of the families in the community, have stepped up. Business owners were asked for $5,000.”

Of course the community and the school are small. But the determination, innovation and resolve to bring Jewish education to as many children as possible are a story that must be widely told. It offers lessons and a path for other communities.

The community of Myrtle Beach has found a way. So too can we.

Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Earlier this month The CJN published an article that tracked “the cost of being Jewish in Canada”. It provided the average cost of six different markers of Jewish life – challah, synagogue, day school, real estate, summer camp and burial – in the major Jewish centres of the country.

The article was informative and smartly presented. The reporter, Michael Fraiman, meaningfully presented a wealth of information in a format that was easy to read with helpful explanatory commentary.

Apart from isolated pieces of information, such as the cost of a home in the Jewish neighbourhood in Halifax, we suspect most readers – especially in the GTA – could not have been very surprised by the figures in the article. They saw in print an itemization of the burdens on their families’ backs.

The large, imposing elephant in the dense information packed into the article was the telling statement by its author, “Ontario is the sole province to not subsidize private schools,” Thus, to our great chagrin, the average cost of day school in the GTA, listed as $17,000, is significantly higher than in any other city in the country where day schools exist.

How is this discrimination still possible in the year 2018?

The government of Ontario has shown itself to move quickly on matters that offend its policy conscience. If it were to know the full, background, details and dire implications of this ongoing educational funding unfairness, it stands to reason that it would act in this policy realm as well to end the discrimination that has so unjustifiably marred educational funding in our province.

We urge GAJE members to inform their MPPs of this ongoing injustice and to seek their aid in bringing it to an end.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Professor Steven Windmueller teaches at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. He has just published an essay that examines the informative Pew Report of five years ago that examined the characteristics of the Jewish community in the United States. Appropriately enough his essay is entitled “Pew: Five Years Later: What We Have Learned & What Do We Need to Do?”.

Prof. Windmueller’s essay is important. It raises once again and places squarely in the centre of our communal discussions, if not also, alas, in our consciences, the fundamental questions of how we shall determine our future as Jews.

Windmueller wrote, “The Pew Study in many ways confirmed the findings of the 2012 New York Jewish Community Study. The signs of erosion of American Jewish identity from within are too strong to ignore. “They translate to less connection to Jewish practice and observance among younger Jews; less attachment to synagogues, and establishment Jewish organizations, including federations; and more tolerance and acceptance for marrying outside the faith.”

He also noted that the findings in relation to religious affiliation patterns and intermarriage rates were not a surprise to Jewish leaders but “nonetheless pose significant challenges to the primary institutions of the community, namely synagogues and federations.”

But Prof. Windmueller he did not restrict his observations to this brief, rather pessimistic, thumbnail summary. He also offered some positive nuggets from the Pew study: “belonging to the Jewish people” (75%) and the “deep emotional attachment to Israel” (69%).”

How might the Jewish community build off of these “positives” in order to galvanize communal involvement? Prof. Windmueller asked.

Three specific outcomes of the Pew study held special significance for Prof. Windmueller:

1. The Study noted a particular concern over prejudice and hate.
2. 56% of the respondents identified their Jewish identity as being connected to their commitment to “social justice.”
3. The significant “pride” that American Jews express in connection with “being Jewish,” with some 94% embracing this notion.

He ties these positive findings into what he calls “the growing presence of non-traditional forms of Jewish engagement” and observes with, perhaps, a sense of resignation in his voice, that increasingly “the very adjective “Jewish” is open to debate.”

Of course, the Pew Study of five years ago concerned only the Jewish community in the United States. Its findings, however, are only a short stretch that we can all make toward the community in Canada.

Over and over again, GAJE notes that the studies, the commissions, the reports and the findings from all of the inquiries from all academic and other quarters into the state of the Jewish community in North America (i.e., apart from the Orthodox and Haredi communities), offered a variation on the same conclusion, namely that there are “significant challenges to the primary institutions of the community.” And now, in light of the evolving Jewish landscape, we quite reasonably also read the very adjective “Jewish” is open to debate.

There is truly only one long-term antidote to the various descriptions of the failing or evolving Jewish nature of our community: Investment in Jewish education.

In light of the acknowledged significant challenges the Pew Study implies to our synagogues and federations, it would be interesting to know in how many synagogues during the recently concluded High Holidays the subject of the need for Jewish education was discussed from the pulpit, in the pews, or in the hallways and Kiddush clubs.

If the answer is “not too many, if any at all” then it is no wonder that (non-Orthodox) synagogues face clouded, uncertain futures.

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Shabbat Shalom.

GAJE

Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit, teaches Judaic Studies and History at The George Washington University. She chronicles the development of the Jewish community in the United States. She recently wrote a short essay about the history of Jewish day schools in America. It was not an argument on behalf of day schools. Nor was it a polemic against. It was, simply, a brief outline of the rise of day school education as one among many of mainstream educational choices within the community.

The sub-headline of the essay captures its gist. “Once demonized as the community embraced public schools, they [day schools] eventually came into their own by teaching ‘Judaism and Americanism’ side by side.”

As in most new communities in Western societies where Jews arrived in the late 19th and then 20th century and then tried to integrate into the mainstream majority society, Joselit notes that “America’s Jews understood all too well that the public school was both the ticket to modernization and the price they had to pay to become full-fledged Americans.”

Not surprisingly therefore, public school education was embraced by the newcomers.

Some years later, as immigrants grew more accustomed to and secure in their surroundings, certain individuals decided to assert and preserve their religious identity by embarking on a new approach to education, in the form of intensive day school education.

“It took enormous vision, leavened by a giant leap of faith, to imagine a Jewish educational institution that could hold its own against the mighty public school and do right by American-born boys and girls, all the while offering first-rate instruction in Jewish subjects.”

Joselit describes the difficulties in initiating Jewish day schools and the opposition to doing so in certain circles. But despite the long odds in making day schools happen, Joselit writes: “Little by little, though, something started to give: Jewish day school education became an increasingly attractive option. Between 1917 and 1939, American Jews established 23 such institutions in the greater New York metropolitan area alone.”

Then Joselit makes note of one the key revelations that helped launch day schools throughout the United States: “What fueled their efforts was the sobering realization that hardly any committed or “sturdy Jews” emerged from the prevailing system in which Jewish education played second fiddle to the public school. (Our emphasis)

“In the years that followed, especially in the wake of the Shoah and the rise of the State of Israel, Jewish day schools gained in both number and collective esteem. Once marginalized and derided, they came to be seen, in the words of the Orthodox Union, as the “most exciting and hopeful phenomenon in Jewish life in America. Statistics bore out that optimistic assertion, as did the emergence of Conservative and Reform-affiliated day schools. By the late 1990s, according to one census, American Jewry could boast nearly 670 Jewish day schools; the most recent tabulation, in 2013-2014, puts that number at 861.”

Since Joselit’s essay is intended as a historical survey about the advent of day schools in the United States, she offers no conclusions about their importance or impact upon the generations of young and future Jews. Nor does she attempt to make the case for day schools.

Pointing to the obvious and widely acknowledged stumbling blocks to the further growth of days schools in our times, such as the “exorbitant costs” and the “decreasing denominationalism” among Jews, Joeselit concludes with a shrug.

“It’s anyone’s guess as to what the future holds.”

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By making Jewish education in the GTA affordable––starting with day school education––we have the opportunity to actually determine what the future will hold in our community.

We have the opportunity to write our own history. It is imperative that we do so.

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Shabbat Shalom. Mo’adim l’Simchah. Chag samayach.

GAJE

Rabbi Marc D. Angel, the founder of the New York-based Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals in New York shares a poignant thought about the holiday of Sukkot. He reflects upon the holiday’s alternate name, The Time of our Happiness in his article, Happiness: Thoughts for Succoth.

Rabbi Angel points to a tradition that suggests our forefather Jacob was 15 years old when his grandfather Abraham passed away. That Abraham’s and Jacob’s lives—and beliefs, values and ideals—overlapped leads Rabbi Angel to observe: “when grandparents and grandchildren share ideas and ideals, this is a sign of continuity, love… and genuine happiness. When there is a “generation gap,” there is sadness and alienation.

“The relationship between Abraham and Jacob suggests the key to the future redemption of Israel—when the traditions are shared, loved and experienced by the generations of grandparents and grandchildren. A teacher of mine once quipped: Who is a Jew? Someone with Jewish grandchildren! While this is not an objectively true statement, it underscores a vital principle in the Jewish adventure: the importance of transmitting our teachings and values through the generations.

“The genuine happiness that derives from family and national continuity does not just happen by chance. It is the result of deep devotion, strong commitment, and many sacrifices…Happiness entails a genuine and deep sense of wholeness. It is not attained casually…Succoth, the festival of our happiness, reminds us to strive for genuine happiness, to be committed to transmitting our traditions through the generations.”

The implications for GAJE of Rabbi Angel’s thoughts on genuine happiness are obvious: Rabbi’s Angel’s idea of genuine happiness stems from a sense of family and national continuity. Continuity stems from devotion, commitment, and sacrifice, the very qualities – we can all agree – that are required of families and especially the community in which they live, in providing a system of affordable Jewish education.

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Shabbat Shalom. Mo’adim l’Simchah

GAJE

Last week, at the launch of the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s 2018 campaign, Emily Martell, a Grade 12 student at TanenbaumCHAT, spoke about the importance of Jewish Education.

Her brief remarks were deeply personal, sweetly written, emotionally moving and powerfully inspiring. They should be required reading during these ten “interim” days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, when we are inclined to introspection and reflection. Or should be.

We excerpt only a few statements from Emily’s remarks. However we recommend that you read her remarks in their entirety here, in The CJN: http://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/opinions/the-importance-of-jewish-education-grade-12-student-speaks-to-uja-federation.

Emily acknowledged what empirical evidence has already proven, namely: The cost of tuition does indeed make a difference in bringing children into our schools.

“Even though it wasn’t the only reason,” Emily said, “the cost of tuition played a role in my family’s decision to put me in the public school system.”

Emily also provides the data that were the result of the reduced tuition at CHAT.

“When I started in Grade 9, the total enrolment for my grade was 250 students. Last year, it dropped to only 190. This year, as I embark on my last year in the Jewish education system, I am so thrilled to see nearly 300 grade 9 students roaming the halls of TanenbaumCHAT. It is truly a blessing to know that so many kids will be able to share the same kinds of experiences that I have benefited from and that they will be getting a first-class Jewish and general studies education.”

Emily also spoke from the heart about the life-changing, long term attachment that results from being part of a system of Jewish education.

“Fortunately, I went to a great public school that was strong academically and where I built friendships that are very meaningful to me. But, there is just something about a Jewish education that is extremely special. I think one of the greatest values of a Jewish education, whether it’s through a day school or supplementary school, is that it goes such a long way toward instilling a love of Jewish life. But beyond that, it leads to a desire to become active in Jewish life and in helping to strengthen the Jewish community.”

Emily’s words are a testament to the observation of the ancient sages who proclaimed that after the destruction of the Second Temple, prophecy would be heard from the mouths of our children. We will not burden Emily by saying she uttered words of prophecy. But we can and will indeed say that she spoke words of forceful, compelling truth. And we shall thank her for doing so. Thank you Emily for sharing your words and stirring our hearts.

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Shabbat Shalom. Gmar Chatimah Tovah.

GAJE