In February of 1996 – 20 years and four months ago – the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto published the report of its Commission on Jewish Education. The commission had been struck some four years earlier in March 1992. It was part of a broad “mobilization” within the organized Jewish world of North America to assess the state of the delivery of formal Jewish establish within respective local communities. The Report of the Commission on Jewish Education in North America, called A Time to Act, was the tripwire for local studies.

Some two decades have elapsed since then.

The key statement of hope and purpose was succinctly articulated in the letter of presentation to the UJA Federation’s Board of Governors. The diverse members of the commission were of the view “that our community, Am Yisroel, can only survive if its members are Jewish because of knowledge and commitment not merely as a result of an accident of birth.”

But the report acknowledged a worrisome reality then that has evolved since then into a full-blown, dire threat to the viability of diverse, creatively rich and fulfilling Jewish communal life in the near future.

“Declining UJA campaigns and the resultant limitation on funds available for education, combined with rising tuition fees and lower family incomes, have placed significant pressure on the educational system and widened the gap between funds available and funds needed. Despite the limitation on financial resources, the educational system must continue to ensure and enhance the quality of education, to maintain access to Jewish education for school aged children while improving accessibility beyond childhood and to generally enrich educational opportunities for all members of the community.”

Despite the best intentions and myriad efforts of the individuals who labored two decades ago to resolve the issues that lay at the heart of their worries, those issues remain. Today they menace the future of the community in far larger dimension of worry and threat.

•••

It has fallen to us – the next generation – to finally, permanently find a way to ensure the affordability of and accessibility to a Jewish educational system that is excellent and accountable and once again the diadem in the crown of the Jewish community.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

The Funding Committee is working on a set of newly imagined funding proposals. It is hoped that the target date for presenting them to the public will be in the early autumn.

•••

In his column this month in The Canadian Jewish News, Daniel Held, Executive Director, Julia and Henry Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education, pleaded for a new approach, more invigorated and comprehensive approach for “maximizing both the depth and breadth of impact of Jewish education on our community.”

Specifically, he urged community leaders and activists, not only educators, to try to convince the parents of the increasing numbers of families who are uncertain about whether they will continue with their children’s Jewish education after Grade Eight, or even start formal Jewish education for their children. Or as Held elegantly wrote, “Whereas once a child’s Jewish journey was somewhat prescribed, today parents and children are undecided, waiting to be convinced of the extent to which they will engage in Jewish educational experiences.”

Held minced no words. We must be quite vocal in proclaiming the individual and collective importance of Jewish education, identity and affiliation.

“The leadership of schools, camps, synagogues, and other Jewish organizations must concentrate not only on ensuring the highest quality (and affordability) of the programs they offer, but also on articulating the value proposition they offer to an increasingly discerning consumer and shouting it from the rooftops.”) (Our emphasis)

We agree entirely with Held. In our view, however, the highest, most daunting hurdle for the majority of the vacillating, uncommitted, “maybe” families to surmount is cost of tuition. Making the key Jewish educational experience affordable is the pre-eminent challenge to the leadership.

In this regard, it is fortuitous to note that Held’s plea to the leadership of the community found a resonant echo this week in the words of Rabbi Marc D. Angel, the head of The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals.

In recalling the character of a friend who had passed away, Rabbi Angel defined somewhat the type of individual who we believe will succeed in fulfilling Held’s hope.

“Religious leadership needs to be in the hands of those…who see the long view of Jewish history and destiny, who are tirelessly and selflessly committed to serving God and humanity with love, kindness, compassion, wisdom and moral courage. Great leadership is the gift of few special individuals who have a trans-generational view, who draw strength from the wisdom of the past and who keep focused on the needs of their generation and the generations yet to come.”

The leadership that Held seeks and that Rabbi Angel partially describes is emerging anew in our community, the inheritors of the generous, visionary founding generations of men and women who understood the central, core importance of Jewish education as the guarantor of a Jewish tomorrow.

Jewish education will become affordable and with it, the vitality of Jewish continuity will become assured.

•••

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

The CIJA Task Force on the Affordability of Jewish Education met last week. As a member of the task force, GAJE tries to contribute to its work and monitor the task force’s progress.

The following is a brief summary of the meeting.

• Discussions with federal government officials are ongoing on possible security infrastructure funding for the schools. The Task Force plans a three-pronged approach that will include attempting to conscript Jewish federations across the country to make representations on the subject to respective local officials.
• The group discussed the possibility of building a wide faith-based coalition of other communities to lobby the provincial government for payments for health support services from provincial government for all children with disabilities. The task force intends to emphasize that the issue is one of fairness for students with special needs.
• CIJA members intend to discuss education-related matters with the Premier and other members of the government during the Premier’s business mission to Israel.
• Questions were raised about the pace of progress and the mounting frustration with the fact that there seem to be no positive results to report to the community. CIJA acknowledged and shares the frustration and reiterated their objective to solve the affordability crisis. The task force’s approach however is one of incremental achievements.
• The next task force meeting is expected to be held before the end of June.

•••

Last month, the CJN published an article by Rabbi Lee Buckman, head of school at TanenbaumCHAT, urging students and their parents not to regard the completion of Grade 8 in a Jewish school as sufficient formal Jewish education.

Rabbi Buckman pointed to three specific reasons for the importance of a Jewish high school education:

1. It plays a vital role in solidifying a teenager’s Jewish identity.
2. The big, complex questions are discussed and debated.
3. It prepares students to feel comfortable in their own Jewish skin when they face the “real world” outside the Jewish bubble.

Rabbi Buckman wrote “Every day… I see firsthand the path to passionate and committed Jewish adulthood being shaped – each student strengthening a Jewish future for all of us.”

Rabbi Buckman acknowledged “there are a lot of understandable reasons for why parents may not choose Jewish high school for their child. ‘Knowing enough’ however, is not one of them.”

We agree with Rabbi Buckman when he urges the continuation of formal Jewish education past Grade 8. But we also acknowledge that one of those “understandable reasons” to which he refers for parents choosing not to send their children to Jewish high school is: the cost of the education.

That is precisely why GAJE formed.

We are dedicated to making Jewish education affordable. And, as we have affirmed over and over again, though it may take some time, we will succeed. Failure is simply not an option.

•••

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

As reported last week, the GAJE committees are continuing with their respective tasks.

The CIJA Task Force on the Affordability of Jewish Education met today. As you know, GAJE is a member of the CIJA committee. Next week we will provide a report of this meeting.

•••

Early in this week’s Torah Portion, Kedoshim, we read a compelling command from God to the Jewish people as related by Moshe.

“Be holy,” God says, “because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

Holiness, we quickly learn, is determined by how we behave rather than by who we are. There is no automatic status of holiness. Holiness does not attach to us by virtue of our lineage or our ancestry. Holiness attaches to us by virtue of our behaviour toward our fellow human beings.

For us to better understand what is expected of us in order to behave in a holy manner, the Torah then provides a set of examples of the types of behaviour that fall within the “holiness” category. One of the key prototypical examples is “you shall not insult a deaf individual or place a stumbling block before an individual who is crippled.” (It is not difficult to see the straight line between this mandatory injunction and modern human rights legislation.)

It is in this spirit of holiness-through-action that we pursue our objective of making Jewish education affordable for every family that seeks such education for their children. The cost of a Jewish education should be within reach of the young families that comprise our community. Helping them helps us all. It helps secure a confidant, knowledgeable, thriving Jewish community for all times.

Is that not also an act of holiness?

It must be.

•••

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

Back to work.

The Funding committee is refining and organizing a series of new funding options to present to the public.

The Marketing committee is working on the details of a community event to be held, it is hoped, in the autumn.

The Political and Legal Action committee is proceeding with two items on its agenda.

Full reports on the committees’ work will be submitted in due course.

•••

Last month, Elliot Abrams, the former American diplomat and currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote a thoughtful, if provocative essay in Mosaic Magazine, “If American Jews and Israel are Drifting Apart, What’s the Reason?”

The essay evoked considerable response and especially interesting elucidatory support by three scholars, Daniel Gordis, Martin Kramer and Jack Wertheimer, each of whom echoed Abrams’ thesis but for different reasons.

Subsequently, in response to the responders, Abrams suggested that there was a path that offered a way to mitigate if not entirely avoid the looming divide between the two largest Jewish communities in the world. That path, Abrams wrote was Jewish education.

Abrams wrote specifically about the Jewish community in the United States. But the Jews of Canada should take his observations to heart as well. For our ethnic-religious situation might soon mirror that of our American co-religionists.

“But [full integration into American society] is now a fact, and staring the American non-Orthodox in the face is the prospect of Jewish assimilation leading to Jewish extinction. That being the reality, is it possible that day schools might be re-examined?

“One critical barrier here, even for the moderately affluent, is financial: on top of the other burdens of engaged Jewish life—synagogue dues, summer camps, kosher food, and so forth—day schools are an expensive proposition. Especially in localities boasting excellent public schools, they may seem either beyond reach or unnecessary, or both. And here, to make things worse, the organized community’s priorities are upside-down. Rather than making sure that a day-school education is affordable and available to all who want it—as Jack Wertheimer has tirelessly advocated—Jewish agencies have not only undervalued the relative worth of such an education but have often led the fight against extending any help at all to religious schools in general, even in the form of vouchers, tuition tax credits, or other tax breaks that are clearly constitutional.

“The day-school movement in America is one of the proven secrets of continuing Orthodox strength and solidarity. As Wertheimer has written, a day-school education ‘greatly increases the chances of children learning the skills necessary for participation in religious life, for living active Jewish lives, and for identifying strongly with other Jews.’ One can only hope that non-Orthodox Jews and Jewish organizations seeking to survive in America will reconsider its benefits and relax their visceral and ideological opposition to communal and other forms of support for non-public schools.

“Whether or not they do, however, I join my three respondents in fearing the near-irreversibility of the underlying trends contributing to the weakening of the American Jewish community. All the more reason, then, to keep front and center in one’s consciousness the single key fact of modern Jewish existence: for the first time in 2,000 years there is a Jewish state, it is growing and thriving, and it is becoming the center of world Jewish life. Would we want it otherwise? American Jews today may be declining in strength and centrality, but they are also witness to and can actively participate in the miracle of the Jewish state. In Daniel Gordis’s words, Israel is ‘the Jewish people’s last remaining hope.’ It is also something more: something, in Martin Kramer’s words, that we should always regard just as a hundred generations of Jews before us would have done—with “pure wonder.”

•••

With the commemoration of Yom Hashoah v’Hagvurah this week, we have entered a uniquely poignant period of collective history that inspires profound feelings of peoplehood. Next week we commemorate Yom Hazicaron. Then, as evening falls on Yom Hazicaron, we switch emotional gears to celebrate Israel’s 68th Yom Ha’atzma’ut.

When the day arrives that Jewish education is affordable in perpetuity, we will then see that these feelings of Jewish peoplehood will also be assured in perpetuity.

Shabbat shalom.

We urge you to commemorate Yom Hazicaron and to celebrate Yom Ha’atzma’ut!

GAJE

The Sedarim of 2016 are past. Their magical moments will now become new entries into our respective memory banks of all holidays past.

•••

At this juncture in our effort, one year after we began, it is important to remind our members and followers of our twofold task. We quote from our founding document. “We will be the catalysts for placing the subject of day school affordability back onto the community’s agenda. More importantly, we will be the catalysts for actually finding solutions.”

Some individuals doubt we will succeed. Some are skeptical. Doubts and skepticism are indeed warranted and justifiable given the extent of the task ahead of us.

But we will succeed. Eventually. And as we also note from our founding document, failure is not an option.

We are buttressed in our resolve by the recent comments by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, the head of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals in New York, on the Torah reading for the seventh day of Pesach.

“The 19th century Rabbi Israel Salanter once quipped: “When people come to a wall that they can’t go through, they stop. When Jews come to a wall that they can’t go through–they go through.”

“The Torah reading on the Seventh Day of Pessah includes the dramatic episode of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. When they reached the shore of the sea, they faced an existential crisis. Behind them, the Egyptian troops were coming to destroy them. In front of them was the Red Sea. They were trapped, with no obvious solution to their dilemma.

“The Midrash tells of various reactions among the Israelites as they pondered their imminent destruction. Some said: we should have stayed in Egypt! Others said: the situation is hopeless; we and our families will perish. Woe unto us.

“The common denominator of these approaches is that they led to psychological and emotional paralysis. Crying over what they could have done or should have done did not address their current crisis; it stifled their ability to cope. Declaring the situation to be hopeless led to despair. They came to a wall–and they stopped.

“The Midrash tells that Nahshon ben Aminadav, head of the tribe of Judah, walked into the Red Sea. When the water reached his neck, then the sea miraculously split–and the Israelites were saved. Nahshon is described as a great hero because he took things into his own hands; he acted decisively…

“Nahshon came to a wall–and he went through; and he brought the rest of the people through as well.

“Worrying that stems from regret that we should have or could have done things differently–such worrying is negative and self-defeating. The past is over, and we need to confront the crisis as it faces us now. We don’t have the option of returning to the past to undo decisions. (Hopefully, we can learn from these past decisions when we get through the current crisis, and contemplate how to make future decisions.) Likewise, it is not productive to sink into self-pity and passive despair. Indeed, despair feeds on itself and infects others with a spirit of helplessness.

“We should worry like Nahshon worried. We should not minimize the dangers and the risks; but we should deliberate on what is at stake and how we can overcome the difficulty. We should have confidence that if God has brought us this far, He will keep His promises to us and bring us ultimate redemption. We should be ready to act decisively, to think “out of the box”, to maintain forward momentum.”

•••

To the doubters and skeptics we say: We have hit a wall. But we are going through it. Please join us.

The next major step for GAJE is to bring to the attention of the public some of our proposed new, reimagined, “out of the box” options for funding Jewish education.

Stay tuned.

Chag samayach.

GAJE

The next eight days provide somewhat of a lull in our work. After Pesach however, committees will resume their work, with lingering images of poignant Seder moments freshly inspiring us to do so.

•••

Eight days ago a sophisticated blogger (Relevance in the Age of Affordability by drdan) responded to a speech by American philanthropist Michael Steinhardt on March 9 in Philadelphia (see our March 18, 2016 update) in which Steinhardt decried the failure of secular, liberal Judaism to provide relevant Jewish education to this generation of young Jews in the United States.

Steinhardt lamented the absence of a meaningful non-religious Jewish Day School system in the United States. But he rejected the notion that the cost of tuition was a major causal factor. There were “more important factors” for this decline according to Steinhardt.

The blogger emphatically disagreed with Steinhardt. “One cannot have a serious discussion about relevance in Jewish education, about creating learning opportunities that speak to the next generation of Jews and foster viable Jewish identification without addressing the most pressing issue of 21st century Jewish education. Affordability.

“One cannot be alive in 2016… and not be cognizant of the fact that Jewish families, liberal Jewish families, even with the best of intentions, cannot afford to send their children to Jewish day schools.

“They cannot get their kids into the room where relevant (or irrelevant) Jewish learning takes place. Their kids cannot take advantage of the best practices and all the opportunities available in day school settings because their salaries cannot keep up with the increasing cost of day school tuition.

“But I would argue that for every Jewish family who preferred to send their child to a school with a more haimishe view on universalism (say, a Quaker school) than a parochial Jewish day school, there are at least THREE to FIVE Jewish families who would have loved to fill that open spot in the Jewish classroom but simply could not afford it.

“We cannot expect to have a viable Jewish community if vast number of us are ignorant of our history, culture, language and tradition. This is the stuff of which irrelevance is made… and extinction.”

•••

Pesach begins in a few hours, tonight.

It is the only holy day on our religious calendar whose core commandment is the coming together of family and friends and invited guests for a festive meal and for the retelling of the exodus of our forebears from slavery in Egypt.

The exodus is the defining moment of our history. It is the foundation stone of our peoplehood. We recount the miraculous departure from ancient Egypt each day, every day, in our prayers and all our ritual practices. For us, it is the beginning of who we are as a people.

Perhaps that is why the Haggadah ordains that, irrespective of the level of one’s learning and wisdom, everyone is expected to recount the great story of the Jewish slaves exodus from their oppressors in Egypt. The story is simply that important.

By providing a Jewish education for our children and for all our children throughout the generations, we will ensure that the story is retold and our sense of peoplehood preserved for all eternity. In the words of the blogger above, “We cannot expect to have a viable Jewish community if vast number of us are ignorant of our history, culture, language and tradition. This is the stuff of which irrelevance is made… and extinction.”

And that is precisely why we have all joined forces to create Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education. The education of our children is vital. It must not be beyond the financial reach of their families.

Chag samayach.

GAJE

The meeting held earlier this week by Funding Committee to discuss new ideas and new possibilities towards funding was as heartening as it was spirited. In addition to four GAJE members, seven other individuals also attended. Space limited numbers. Moreover, we wished to encourage uninhibited, substantive, respectful discussion on the merits of the proposals that were raised. There were two criteria for choosing the individuals who were invited to share their ideas with GAJE: (1) a recognized, widely acknowledged expertise in a business-related field, and (2) a recognized, widely acknowledged commitment to the cause of ensuring the viability of Jewish education.

Original thinking was on evidence throughout the meeting. A number of new proposals were suggested and debated. The ideas were recorded. They will be refined, made more precious and further presented to and “tested” with groups of parents.

It is hoped that the ideas will be ready for public presentation in the late spring. We are determined to present new, meaningful, substantive possibilities for individuals and families to consider in the effort to make Jewish education affordable.

•••

The CJN this week published an essay by Rabbi Eddie Shostak of Montreal entitled Driving Rabbi Sacks. The article is an elegantly written first person by Rabbi Shostak of his having been asked to be Rabbi Sacks’ chauffeur during the latter’s recent visit to Montreal. Among the goals Rabbi Shostak set for himself from this unique opportunity, was to ask Rabbi Sacks “one good question.”

The question Rabbi Shostak posed to Rabbi Sacks was: “Where can one make a greater impact on Jewish lives – in a day school or at a synagogue?” And this is how Rabbi Shostak recording Rabbi Sacks’ response.

“Rabbi Sacks paused before rejecting the simple binary offered: ‘Without question, one can make the most impact in day schools,” he said. ‘Communities should have their primary focus on day schools but in partnership with strong synagogues.’”

In the column, Rabbi Shostak elaborates upon Rabbi Sacks’ straightforward but somewhat clipped answer. Among the key insights Rabbi Shostak-Rabbi Sacks offer is the core conclusion that animates our cause. “Study after study shows that Jewish engagement is dependent more than ever on day school education.”

We commend the article to you. Unfortunately, at the current time, it is not yet posted to the Canadian Jewish News website (http://www.cjnews.com), but we hope it will be available there shortly.
•••

We wish you well in your Pesach preparations.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

The Funding Committee is sponsoring a meeting next week in which new ideas and new possibilities towards funding will be the only subject. A full report will follow outlining the most viable possibilities.

There will actually be new options for individuals and families to consider in the effort to make Jewish education affordable.

•••

An article appeared this week in The CJN about the results of a survey by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Julia & Henry Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Education on the nature and perhaps too the extent, of the Jewish engagement of the Jewish community in York Region. One of its key findings, reproduced below, is germane to our work.

The survey was based upon 4,600 responses. According to the article, the population of Vaughan more than doubled in the last 20 or so years, from 21,290 in 1991 to 47,135 in 2011. As of 2011, 30 per cent of Jewish Torontonians under the age of five live in Vaughan.

Daniel Held, executive director of the Koschitzky Centre, said one striking finding was that in Vaughan overall, even among the most Jewishly engaged, parents of school-age children responded “maybe” far more than “definitely” to questions of whether they would send their kids to Jewish day school, supplementary school, day camp, overnight camp and early childhood education programs.

Although, as Held stated, deeper study of the responses needs to be conducted, the survey did show, that across Jewish institutions, finances were the greatest barrier to entry for respondents in the “maybe” category (our emphasis).

“In a presentation he prepared for UJA Federation’s board of directors that he supplied to The CJN, Held said it was surprising to learn that finances proved such a significant barrier to families not only for sending kids to day school, but also to supplementary Jewish schools and residential camps.

“It’s clear that the cost of engaging with the Jewish community, in any form, is a barrier we need to lower… especially for middle income families,” he said.

•••

GAJE is committed to helping lower the financial barrier currently barring the way for many families to Jewish education. And as we wrote last week, It is our belief that the obligation to make Jewish education meaningfully accessible to as many families who seek it for their children falls upon the entire community. This belief is in keeping with Jewish history and with the actions of our forebears in every generation who understood that securing a Jewish future meant securing the Jewish education of each and every subsequent generation of Jews.

Pesach looms. What an opportunity to revel in and reflect upon one of the uniquely Jewish experiences in our lives!

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE

In the coming weeks we will again appeal to the rabbis in our community to take up our cause, supporting it and speaking out on its behalf from their respective pulpits or places of teaching. It is our hope that when the rabbis will be ready and able to speak in support of the need for affordable Jewish education, we will have introduced to the public a number of new, re-imagined ideas for funding Jewish education.

There will actually be new options for individuals and families to consider in the effort to make Jewish education affordable.

It is our belief that the obligation to make Jewish education meaningfully accessible to as many families who seek it for their children falls upon the entire community. This belief is in keeping with Jewish history and the actions of our forebears in every generation and in every country in which they settled or which they merely “visited.”

•••

The late Edgar Bronfman’s autobiography, Why Be Jewish?, was reviewed last week by Steve Linde in the Jerusalem Post. For many years, Bronfman was the head of the World Jewish Congress, a post that he used to doggedly and determinedly advocate on behalf of Jewish rights and advance the wellbeing of Jewish communities around the world. As Bronfman makes plain in the book, he came to an appreciation of his Jewish identity only later in life. He was not an observant Jew, but he was a deeply proud Jew who endeavoured to learn as much as he could about his people’s history, heritage, culture, traditions and faith. He was a fierce fighter for the Jewish people as many Swiss bankers and European diplomats will reluctantly attest.

Some of Bronfman’s observations and Linde’s comments bear directly upon GAJE’s work and are worthy of publishing here.

The idea of Jewish peoplehood and kinship is central to Edgar Bronfman’s life, and his last book, Why Be Jewish? is a well-crafted legacy of a modern-day Moses who surveys the critical challenges facing the Jewish people throughout its history, and issues “a clarion call to a generation of secular, disaffected and unaffiliated Jews.”

“As a Jewish leader, I am well aware that unless we win over our disinterested Jews, a nearly 4,000-yearold civilization of tremendous beauty and worth could end up in the dustbin of history,” he warns.

Bronfman views the Jewish people as “one of the many vibrant patches on the richly diverse quilt of humanity.”

“To identify with the Jewish people does not mean to care only for the fates of other Jews,” he says.

“In fact, the opposite is true. The Jewish tradition, from ancient to modern times, has always placed tremendous emphasis on protecting and caring for those who are different.”

Having said this, Bronfman is a strong proponent of Jews helping Jews. It was the notion of Jewish peoplehood, he says, that motivated him to become president of the World Jewish Congress, an organization dedicated to the interests and security of the Jewish people.

“My deep sense of peoplehood gave me the fortitude to fight the difficult battles to secure the freedom of Soviet Jews and to help recover Jewish assets stolen by the Nazis. It inspired me to relentlessly advocate with President George H.W. Bush in order to persuade him to help undo the 1972 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism.

“And it was peoplehood that fueled my quest to convince the Spanish and German governments to recognize or live up to their responsibilities to Israel.

All of these were very big battles, but as a Jew I felt duty-bound to wage them.”

The book was completed just weeks before Bronfman died on December 21, 2013 at the age of 84, and has been published posthumously by Hachette.

Although not a rabbi, scholar or educator, he says that in his roles as a Jewish activist and philanthropist, “I developed a deep and absorbing love for our traditions and people. It is this passion that I seek to pass along.”

Bronfman propagated twelve principles which he offers as advice for leading and living a Jewish life:

1. Revere godliness: the true, the good and the beautiful.
2. Ask questions.
3. Commit to repairing the outer and inner world.
4. Perform acts of loving-kindness.
5. Assist society’s weakest members.
6. Champion social justice and environmental causes.
7. Welcome the stranger.
8. Engage with Jewish traditions, texts, philosophy, history and art.
9. Study and strive for excellence in the humanities and other secular fields.
10. Promote family and community.
11. Embrace key Jewish holidays and life-cycle events.
12. Conduct business ethically.

Bronfman writes “Just as Moses brought the tablets of law from the mountaintop, Judaism, through its emphasis on ethics, morality, and human relationships, brings the divine to earth,”

“That is the heart of Jewish spirituality.”

•••

Bronfman embraced his “Jewish” awakening at the age of 60. May our work enable Jewish youngsters to embrace their own awakenings much earlier.

Shabbat shalom.

GAJE