The government of Ontario delivered its new budget statement this week announcing its plans to spend some $130 billion in fiscal 2017-2018.

The two key policy areas the government highlighted with specially boosted spending were health and education. According to reports in the press, the government wishes to help ease the burden of health-care costs on families. Thus the province pledged “an additional $7 billion over the next three years for measures designed to boost access to health care, reduce wait times and “enhance patient experience.”

The provincial government said it wishes to reduce class sizes for young students. It therefore committed an additional $1.2 billion in funding for repairs and renewal over the next two years.

It is difficult to quibble with the government’s health and education objective. They are indeed worthy. But we ask ourselves as much in sadness as in anger, given the health and education emphases of the budget, why the Ministry of Education refuses to defray the cost of vital, necessary health support services that non-Catholic, denominational schools incur to enable children with learning disabilities enrolled in their schools? The ministry does defray the cost of health support services for children with the same learning disabilities enrolled in public or Catholic schools. Is it not time for the government to stop differentiating among disabled youngsters? Do they not all deserve to be treated equally?

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We urge families that are able, to enroll their children in Jewish schools.

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Reminders

Yom Hazikaron (Iyar 4) falls on May 1.

Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Iyar 5) falls on May 2.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

With the extensive Pesach holiday period behind us this year, GAJE is moving forward with initiatives in funding and in public advocacy.

The funding committee has held encouraging introductory meetings with federation officials aimed at incorporating reimagined methods for brining new funds into the educational system. We are cautiously moving forward with this initiative.

The advocacy committee is exploring ways to once again place the issue of the provincial government’s discriminatory educational funding policies back onto the public agenda.
We hope there will be new developments to report upon in the near future.

A trilogy of connecting points

Pesach 5777/2017 is over. The celebration and commemoration of the defining collective moment in Jewish history has ended. Until next year.

We now immediately prepare for periods of reflection and commemoration of the trilogy of modern-era, defining moments in our collective Jewish history.

Yom Hashoah v’Hagvurah (Nisan 27) falls on April 24.
Yom Hazikaron (Iyar 4) falls on May 1.
Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Iyar 5) falls on May 2.

These three commemorations are connecting points for our sense of peoplehood. We must teach the essence of these connecting points to our children and our grandchildren through education at home and in school.

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We urge families that are able, to enroll their children in Jewish schools.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

To replace the actual eating of the paschal lamb that took place on the very first Passover night in Goshen, our Sages over the years devised the Seder. It is the paradigmatic teaching moment. Deliberately so. They wanted to convey a sense of renewed relevance and contemporaneity each year for every generation in the retelling of the Exodus from Egypt.

And so we read that it was not our forebears alone whom God redeemed from horrific, dignity-destroying bondage in Egypt. “Even us (sitting at our table, today, some three and half thousand years later) He redeemed, along with our forebears.”

That very explicit statement in the Haggadah, along with other similar explicit and implicit statements in the text, is the proof of our Sages’ intent.

But what of our Sages’ success?

They will only have succeeded in connecting us – each year, indeed every day of each year – in a timeless, invisible cord of shared peoplehood with and responsibility for everybody else sitting around a Seder table throughout the world, if we ourselves feel good about belonging to the Jewish people.

And to feel that way we have to want to belong to the Jewish people and to know what it means to actually do so. That means education – at home and at school. We have to be able to send our children to Jewish schools to instruct, supplement and reinforce what and how they live at home.

If we are to see ourselves as also having left the slavery of Egypt, we must also see ourselves connected to that timeless invisible cord that has tied us to our people for thousands of years. That feeling and that cord must last forever.

Through the education of our children and of their children and of their children forever after, they will.

GAJE wishes the entire community a meaningful, healthy, happy Passover.

Netivot has managed not to raise its tuition for next year.

We urge families to enroll their children in CHAT.

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Shabbat shalom. Chag samayach.

GAJE

Fight for moderation, balance, compassion and inclusiveness. We have celebrated the recent dramatic reduction in next year’s tuition at TanenbaumCHAT because it is evidence of the seriousness with which the community is responding to the crisis of educational affordability. But as we also have written, the generous donation that enabled the 30 percent reduction in tuition must be regarded as only the beginning of the community’s total, creative, out-the-box effort to make Jewish education affordable. Tuition must be dramatically reduced in all the day schools and brought down even further at CHAT.

As a result of the merger of the two CHAT campuses, many Thornhill families have felt unfairly treated and neglected. Indeed, nearly one month after the tuition and merger decision, emotions are still unsettled. One worries about an anger-driven “rupture” in the CHAT parent body. This is profoundly sad and distressing.

Perhaps one way of cooling the anger and of finding a way to resolve differences is to heed the advice of Rabbi Marc D. Angel, the founder of The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals. In preparation for Pesach, Rabbi Angel wrote an article entitled “Ice, Fire, and the Search for the Middle Path: Thoughts as We Approach Pessah.”

In the essay, Rabbi Angel urges us to eschew extreme approaches of either left or right. He urges us to find the “middle” path of moderation, mutual understanding and respect.

“The Jerusalem Talmud (Hagigah 2:1) teaches that the way of Torah is a narrow path. On the right is fire and on the left is icy snow. If one veers from the path, one risks being destroyed by either the fire or the ice. The Torah way of life is balanced, harmonious and sensible. It imbues life with depth, meaning and true happiness. Yet, it is not easy to stay on the path.

“Veering to the left freezes the soul of Judaism… Veering to the right causes one to become embroiled in religious fanaticism, excessive zeal…”

“It is difficult, even uninspiring, to fight for moderation, balance, compassion and inclusiveness. It is so much easier to take extreme positions, where one can argue from the vantage point of ice or fire, rather than to be “lukewarm”.

“All Jews…need to hear a principled and articulate expression of the middle path of Judaism, that veers neither to the right nor to the left…Let us all listen carefully. The future of Judaism and the Jewish people may be at stake.”

Of course, Rabbi Angel wrote specifically about matters of ritual observance. But the principles he has articulated – to fight for moderation, balance, compassion and inclusiveness – are applicable to most crises of life and especially to finding needed compromises and joint solutions to difficult, intra-communal differences.

In Rabbi Angel’s words, we urge affected parties to listen carefully to each other. The future of our community may possibly be at stake.

As all readers of this weekly update know, GAJE is singularly dedicated to bringing as many students as possible into the transformative realm of Jewish education. We have aimed our sights at all forms of Jewish education including formal and informal education, day school, supplementary school, adult lehrhaus and camps. Access to Jewish education is in great part – though not exclusively – a function of affordability. Our first target in the campaign has been day school education because day school education is the most expensive, indeed prohibitively and punitively so, for young families.

We must do our utmost therefore to bring about higher enrollment in our schools.

Toward this end, the first order of urgent communal business is to persuade, convince and plead with as many families as possible to enroll or re-enroll their children at CHAT next year. Higher enrollment will help bring about lower tuition fees and ensure the continued high quality of education in the day schools.

Thus again, we urge families to enroll their children in CHAT.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

Passover is less than three weeks away. The centerpiece of the holiday’s ritual, the Seder, was designed as the paradigmatic instrument of education for our children. It is not too soon, therefore, as we prepare for the holiday to think about it in specifically educationally-related terms and to heighten our focus on the affordability of Jewish education.

In this regard, once cannot overstate the importance of the recent reduction in CHAT’s 2017-2018 tuition. It is an example of the bold, creative, generous thinking that must be brought together from diverse sources to make Jewish education affordable in perpetuity.

As we wrote last week however, this dramatic cut in tuition must be but the beginning of the community’s effort to make Jewish education affordable. Tuitions must be dramatically reduced in all the day schools and brought down even further at CHAT.

Thus, the first order of urgent communal business is to persuade, convince and plead with as many families as possible to enroll or re-enroll their children at CHAT next year.

Higher enrollment will encourage other community philanthropists and/or education-oriented community investors to contribute to the community-wide effort of making education more affordable. Higher enrollment will help guarantee the continued high quality of education in the day schools. It may also result in the eventual re-opening of CHAT’s northern branch.

Thus, we again urge families to enroll their children in CHAT.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

An article written by Shawn Evenhaim, a successful businessman, philanthropist and Jewish school activist in California, entitled “Tuition Revolution”, appeared last week on the eJewish Philanthropy website (http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewish-day-schools-its-time-for-a-tuition-revolution/).

Evenhaim issues a clarion call to the Jews of North America. “We need to revolutionize the way our Jewish Day schools operate. Now is the time to make the changes necessary to ensure that these schools are accessible…”

The tone of the article is urgent. The substance is compelling.

According to Evenhaim, the necessary changes are twofold: reduce tuition and ensure excellence in education. The tuition reduction at the school, of which he is a director, begins in the 2017-18 school year: up to 11 percent for preschool families and some 43 percent for elementary and middle school families. It should be noted that even after these substantial reductions, the fees at his school are in line with current preschool and elementary/middle school tuitions in the GTA. But the significance of the measure for our purposes is in its drastic departure from past practice, not in the final amount of the tuition. For, the tuition will likely be further reduced in years to come.

“This major reduction will make Jewish Education accessible to many in our community and will eliminate the complicated, time-consuming and sometimes uncomfortable process of applying for financial aid,” Evenhaim wrote.” “As we bring down tuition, we will increase enrollment, and lower our cost-per-pupil.” Thus far, the numbers have proven him to be correct for enrollment has already climbed by 200 percent since the initiative was introduced.

“The bottom line is simple: to make Jewish education an attractive option for more families, it must be both excellent and affordable – one cannot be sacrificed for the other.”

A week before Evenhaim’s article, our community experienced a tuition revolution of its own: CHAT reduced its tuition for 2017-18 by one third, from $28,000 to $18,500.

We view this as only the beginning. It is up to our community to ensure that the revolution continues with deeper, across-the-board cuts in tuition throughout the Jewish educational system.

The first step is to have as many families as possible enroll or re-enroll their children in CHAT. The higher the enrollment at CHAT next year, the more persuasive will be the empirical proof that affordability (and excellence) are the key factors for school enrollment. With a demonstrated higher enrollment, the greater the likelihood that funds will increasingly pour into the system to bring down further the tuition charges at the respective schools.

Of course there is no denying that even $18,500 is itself a mammoth figure for most families to pay as are the current tuitions in the elementary and middle schools. Nor is there any denying that for many of the CHAT north students suddenly displaced from their school, the extra daily commute will be a hardship. We urge and we hope the CHAT administration will help the affected families find a way to surmount the hardship.

As a community we must determine that this massive tuition cut in CHAT tuition is but the beginning of the revolution, not its end.

Thus, again, we urge families to enroll their children in CHAT.

Evenhaim wrote: “For too long, we have been talking about the crisis facing Jewish education. We need to face difficult truths and embrace the need for radical change. The time for action is now.”

We agree.

Two things are certain.
1. We must not point fingers at anyone for imperfect decisions made in good faith that bore a heavy cost. We must, rather, extend a hand to find the more perfect solutions together.
2. And, we must continue the tuition revolution.

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Reminder

Limmud Conference

The annual Limmud Toronto conference takes place this weekend, March 19, at St. Andrews Club & Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. The program includes a number of key sessions that relate to the subject of Jewish education including:

• Jewish Education: Do We Want it? Can We Afford It? – Jeffrey Stutz
• A Viable Alternative to the Financial Crisis in Jewish Education – Sholom Eisenstat

We encourage you to attend the conference. To register, visit limmud.ca.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

The Anne & Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (TanenbaumCHAT) and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto this week jointly announced a reduction in next year’s annual tuition from its present level of nearly $28,000 to $18,500, beginning in the upcoming 2017-18 school year. Annual tuition will remain under $19,000 for the next five years.

The reduction in next year’s tuition was made possible by the remarkable generosity by the Jesin-Neuberger Foundation, which spearheaded the tuition reduction initiative with a gift of $10 million and by an anonymous donor who provided $5 million to the initiative.

The reduction in CHAT’s annual tuition is profoundly significant. It promises to bring more students into the high school. The donors, the school and UJA Federation are to be commended. The deep cut in the tuition is to be celebrated.

But, as with the breaking of a glass under the chupah, we must note that our celebration is tempered somewhat by the closing of the north branch of CHAT, by the resulting disruption in the lives of Thornhill CHAT families, by the loss of livelihoods among teaching and other staff and by the feeling that the overall mission is not yet accomplished.

Far from it.

Indeed, tuitions at the high school and the elementary school levels are still oppressively onerous for most of the middle class families in our day school system. If we do not find a way to urgently and significantly reduce the tuitions in the elementary schools, far fewer children will be moving up the Jewish educational ladder to ultimately reach high school.

And yet, we must not lose sight of the importance of the developments. It was a momentous week. The announcements were a watershed, giving heart and hope to the community’s efforts to make Jewish education affordable.

It is our fervent hope that other like-minded individuals will be inspired by the far-seeing generosity of the Jesin-Neuberger Foundation and the anonymous donor. Perhaps others, who have the financial ability to do so, will find it equally compelling to help guarantee the right to a Jewish education to the children of our community? Perhaps some parents will be more inclined now to enroll their children next year at TanenbaumCHAT?

Let us hope.

The drastic reduction in CHAT’s tuition makes Jewish education more affordable next year. But it is not yet actually affordable to the vast majority. It is however a good beginning.

We should all be heartened by the major developments last week and especially by the fact that, clearly, there are people in the community, such as the Jesin-Neuberger Foundation and the anonymous donor, who are mobilizing to make Jewish education affordable. We thank them and say Kol Hakavod.

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Reminder: Limmud Conference!

The annual Limmud Toronto conference takes place next week on March 19 at St. Andrews Club & Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. The program includes a number of key sessions that relate to the subject of Jewish education including:

• Jewish Education: Do We Want it? Can We Afford It? – Jeffrey Stutz
• A Viable Alternative to the Financial Crisis in Jewish Education – Sholom Eisenstat

Other sessions also focus on Jewish education but from different perspectives. We encourage you to consult the website at limmud.ca for the full schedule of events and register for the conference.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

Important Reminders

Let CIJA Know

We continue to urge interested individuals to make their opinions known to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) that the affordability crisis in Jewish education is the pre-eminent and most pressing concern of modern Jewish life in the GTA and that it requires immediate attention. You may send your opinions to CIJA online at www.cija.ca/grassroots/.

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Limmud Conference

The annual Limmud Toronto conference takes place in just over two weeks on March 19 at the St. Andrews Club & Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. The program includes a number of key sessions that relate to the subject of Jewish education including:

• Jewish Education: Do We Want it? Can We Afford It? – Jeffrey Stutz
• A Viable Alternative to the Financial Crisis in Jewish Education – Sholom Eisenstat

Other sessions also focus on Jewish education but from different perspectives. We encourage you to consult the website at limmud.ca for the full schedule of events and register for the conference.

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From the record

In 1992 the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto appointed the Jewish Education Commission to consider a number of issues related to “the specific role of the Federation with respect to Jewish education”. Submissions from the public were invited.

In its submission to the commission, the Board of Jewish Education, in its very first paragraph, reiterated the historical commitment of our community to its Jewish families. If a restructuring of the Federation’s approach to funding Jewish education is required, the Board emphasized that the restructuring “should assure the continued existence of a system that guarantees the right of Jewish education to all children whose families seek to provide them with such an education, regardless of the family’s ability to pay.” (Our emphasis)

The system no longer maintains this guarantee. In fact, the system is now driving parents away from intensive Jewish education for their children. Alas.

It is now imperative – urgently so – that the community apply all its collective resources to restore that historic guarantee.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

If Jewish education collapses, so too ultimately will communal Jewish life.

Some weeks ago, CIJA engaged in a series of online community consultations seeking a consensus listing of the top advocacy priorities for CIJA. Apparently the individuals who responded to the survey did not rank affordable access to Jewish education as a top priority for the GTA.

Disappointed at the failure of affordable Jewish education to be listed as an important policy priority for the community, we join with other interested individuals in asking readers to let CIJA know that in our view the affordability crisis in Jewish education is the pre-eminent concern of modern Jewish life in the GTA.

We therefore ask GAJE members to go to http://www.cija.ca/grassroots/ to participate in the online survey:

1. Click the link “Vote for Your Top Priority in Canadian Jewish Advocacy.”
2. Vote for “Ensure access to Jewish education.”
3. Add a comment about how high tuition impacts you.

Please urge your friends to do the same.

We must convince the advocacy agencies of our community that making Jewish education affordable is the paramount issue demanding attention in the GTA. If Jewish education collapses due to declining enrolment, so too ultimately, will the essence of broad, diverse, engaging, effective communal Jewish life. Even though the online survey was conducted some weeks ago, we must raise our voices about the dire, urgent need to make Jewish education affordable in the GTA.

Thank you.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

In his commentary two weeks ago on the Torah portion Bo, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made a statement that encapsulates the significance of the work of every teacher and every educator who ever attempted over the many years of our history to impart knowledge and insight to our children.

“As Jews we believe that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education.”

Rabbi Sacks’ observation is unassailably true. Because of this truth, Jewish community leaders regarded the task of ensuring the existence and viability of an educational system for the children in their midst as their historic obligation and inescapably sacred responsibility.

Rabbi Sacks quotes the renowned British scholar, historian on this matter.

“The historian Paul Johnson once wrote that rabbinic Judaism was “an ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals.” Much of that had, and still has, to do with the absolute priority Jews have always placed on education, schools, the beit midrash, religious study as an act even higher than prayer, learning as a life-long engagement, and teaching as the highest vocation of the religious life.”

The current situation regarding the unaffordability of Jewish education is untenable for most families. It leads us to ask: does our community still view Jewish education as an absolute priority? If not now, then when?

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Reminder

The annual Limmud Toronto conference takes place this year on March 19 at St. Andrews Club & Conference Centre in downtown Toronto. The program includes the following sessions affecting GAJE:

• Jewish Education: Do We Want it? Can We Afford It? – Jeff Stutz
• A Viable Alternative to the Financial Crisis in Jewish Education – Sholom Eisenstat

Other sessions also focus on Jewish education but from different perspectives.

We urge GAJE members to register for the conference at limmud.ca.

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Shabbat shalom.

GAJE