TORONTO — For the past year, Arthur Landa, executive director of Associated Hebrew Schools, has felt nostalgic every time he completed an annual task.
Arthur Landa
Landa, 67, who is retiring at the end of the summer after 21 years in his job, said that after he completed negotiations with the union or presented the financial statement to the board, for example, he would think, “This is the last time I’ll be doing this.
“When my son, though, asked me if I’m going to miss the beautiful people at Associated, that is when reality set in. I’m really retiring.”
In an interview the morning after his retirement cocktail party, held earlier this month at Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue, Landa said, “after last night, there is no turning back.”
Last week, Associated announced that Elliott Brodkin, who has more than 30 years of financial and management experience, including more than 12 as chief financial officer of the Toronto French School, will be its new CFO/executive director.
Speaking to The CJN about his years at Associated, Landa said he has always had a strong feeling about working in the Jewish community, and making a contribution to Jewish continuity.
A native of Montreal and a graduate of social work from McGill University, he began his career at that city’s YMHA and went on to become executive director of the Jewish Federation of Nashville.
He had been living in Toronto for several years when his late wife, Eva, then director of finance at Jewish Family & Child Service, heard that Associated was seeking an executive director. “The rest is history,” he said.
Jewish education was another challenge to him. “It represented another approach to do what I always wanted to do.”
Early on in his career at Associated, he said, it was evident that the demography of the Jewish community was changing. “The days of [Associated’s former Leslie Street campus] were numbered, because the Jewish community was shrinking in that area.
“From time to time, the Jewish community moves away from the Bathurst corridor, but then it moves back. The Leslie campus [just south of Steeles Avenue] had 1,000 students for 20 years. That’s a big thing.”
Associated also knew that a large number of Jews were moving to the city of Vaughan, and “we began talking about putting up a building in Thornhill. When the Kamin Education Centre opened in 1995, we served 1,100 kids, and the building was meant to hold 800. Now, we’re coming back to the size we first intended.”
Currently, Associated has three campuses: the Kamin Education Centre; the Posluns Education Centre on Neptune Drive, which was was rebuilt in 1998; and the rebuilt Hurwich Education Centre, which houses the Danilack Middle school (on Finch Avenue).
“Over the span of my career, virtually every campus was renovated or built. It was part of our initiative to meet the changing demographics.”
Landa said that he also saw a reshuffling of educational services. “We recognized that the school had to move toward child-centred learning, and we created centres so we could serve students who needed remedial teaching and those who had special talents.
“We help teachers provide a curriculum for students at both ends of the spectrum, so they can recognize the abilities of each and every student.”
Landa praised Mark Smiley, Associated’s current director of education, “for bringing the school to the cutting edge of education, both in Judaic and general studies.”
An ongoing challenge, said Landa, is supporting the more than 500 Associated students who require subsidies. “Even though we get more than $2 million from the community, it’s not enough. We still have deficits, and we’ve been forced to do some creative fundraising.We don’t want the burden to fall on full-fee parents.
“Students are never turned away because they can’t pay. They’re only turned away if we have no space, and that goes for full-fee students as well.”
Landa said he’s committed to Jewish education because of its two elements – Jewish literacy and Jewish experience. “In my view, it’s not sufficient to grow up and learn solely through Jewish experience. It must be complemented by literacy, and day schools provide both.”
When he retires from his “16-hour a day job” he’ll spend time with his five children and five grandchildren, who variously live in the United States, Israel and Toronto, and he’ll return to studying classical music, “especially piano and opera.”
In the speech he gave at his retirement party, Landa said that his hope is that in 100 years from now, “historians will be able to declare that Associated Hebrew School’s sacred mission is still intact – that [it] was the only day school in Toronto, for the past 200 years, that accepted every child, regardless of financial stability, [and] that [it] was the only day school in Toronto committed to providing an excellent Jewish education for every child, regardless of socio-economic background, regardless of religious affiliation, spanning the Jewish spectrum from non-affiliated to the shomer Shabbat. My hope is that this wish is realized.”
