The school year is winding down. Warmer days of summer will soon bring everyone a well-deserved timeout from the classroom. Most students will happily turn their attention to more playful, leisurely preoccupations than homework and learning.
But when summer ends and the yellow school buses and booster-seat car pools roll again, it is very likely they will be bringing fewer students to Jewish schools. It is no longer news to report that enrolment in Jewish day school has been declining over the years. Jewish education has simply become too crushingly expensive. Despite wanting to provide a Jewish education for their children, some parents cannot afford to do so. They will decide not to start such an education for their children or to discontinue one already begun.
And so the decline of curiosity, interest, awareness, knowledge and a sense of belonging to the Jewish People is carved into the next generation of young Jews.
More and more of our children are falling away from the edges of our people like tiny fragments of stone from granite rock splintered away by winds of indifference.
Apart from the haredi and firmly Orthodox Jewish world, the number of individuals who care about being Jewish in a proud, deeply meaningful way is diminishing.
Without wishing to overstate the case, we all know the grim official statistics. Indeed, most of us have seen the statistics on a micro level among our own friends and families.
There are fewer Jewishly literate, Jewishly engaged individuals today than yesterday. Many people – for whom being Jewish is a wondrous privilege rather than an accidental, irrelevant detail of birth – are very worried about the future of our community.
Of course, day school education is not the only way to nurture a lasting, positive Jewish identity in our children. But evidence shows it is one of the best ways.
How then have we allowed it to become so far out of reach for so many young families who wish to be part of Jewish communal life, who wish to play a role in perpetuating a Jewish future?
Throughout our history, we have been known as the People of the Book. If the status quo continues, all too soon the Book will be closed to many of the coming generations. In truth, they may not even have known how to open it.
The status quo is an affront to conscience.
Thus, as readers may have read recently in The CJN, a grassroots group has been formed in Toronto to serve as a catalyst for action to address the crucial subject of the lack of affordability of Jewish education for too many in our community.
The goals are to place the subject of educational affordability back on the agenda, re-think the entire funding model, work with community organizations, open up the discussion to a wide array of concerned individuals, encourage new ideas and, perhaps, actually change the status quo.
Among the four most important words of Jewish life is the inspiring phrase that appears in Israel’s national anthem: “Od loh avdah tikvateinu.” We have not yet lost our hope.
They define the courage, resolve and strength of the Jewish People.
They are a response to the dispirited will of the people as depicted by the prophet Ezekiel in the haunting, surreal image of the valley of the dry bones.
They are, in essence, a restatement of God’s expectations of us: that we become directly involved in reaffirming and re-establishing Jewish life.
In this particular case, that means re-imagining the entire structure of funding affordable Jewish education for our children. And although the task may be very difficult, we have not lost hope.
The grassroots group can be reached at [email protected]
