Dear Friends,
There is no greater holiday that focuses on Jewish education than Pesach. There are only two Torah commandments that we perform at the seder and one of them is to educate our children in how Hashem took us out of Egypt. We spend our seder doing everything possible to get our children involved; both parents and grandparents receive so much nachas when their children and grandchildren are well prepared and well educated in advance of their seder. We spend our seder focusing on the four sons and our need to do everything possible to educate every one of them.
Several weeks ago, the Jewish community throughout Toronto was excited to hear that Tanenbaum CHAT was taking the unprecedented and significant step of lowering its tuition to between $18,500 and $19,000 for the next five years. This was a bold move based on the desire to do everything possible to help the Jewish community in Toronto increase the number of students attending Jewish day schools.
Tuition affordability and day school sustainability is perhaps the greatest crisis facing our day school system today. We all understand and appreciate the vital role that a day school education plays within the lives of our children and as such, parents have been making great sacrifices for decades in order to send their children to day schools.
Two years ago, we quietly began working on a monumental endowment fund whose goal was to ensure that we have the ability to offer significant amounts of subsidy dollars for many years to come. Our focus was on long term stability and long term strength.
In trying to decide what more we could do to help our middle-income families, our primary goal was to ensure that we would maintain the necessary resources to continue to build on the phenomenal educational experience that we deliver. We are committed to maintaining our small class sizes, our innovative programs, our shabbatons and our co-curricular activities, while still finding ways to grow and increase student support and the individual attention that we offer to all of Or Chaim and Ulpana students. We will continue to find innovative and exciting ways to further promote positive religious growth, a strong and unending commitment to religious Zionism and ultimately to continue to invest and grow every aspect of what makes each of our schools so exceptional, so unique and truly so much more than a school.
Last week, we announced that we would be offering an unconditional subsidy for middle income families who find it challenging to pay the full fee to educate their children. Aside from of course wanting to help middle income parents, a major goal of ours was to continue the momentum on helping families afford Jewish day schools as well as bringing more philanthropic dollars within the day school system. We recognize the value in raising awareness in our collective belief that Jewish education should be the primary recipient of Jewish philanthropic dollars.
We believe that this needs to be only the beginning. Toronto is well on its way towards becoming a model city throughout North America in responding to the challenge of day school affordability. The next step is for our entire community to be united around the goal of helping day schools to become more affordable for all. We need all Jews to recognize that if we want a thriving Jewish community in Toronto, we need everyone to support our schools. There are countless ideas that we could come up with, but consider a few:
- Having a city-wide day to fund Jewish education in which there is a large 24 hour online campaign in which parents, grandparents and community members can click on the specific day school they would like their dollars to be allocated towards;
- Having a city-wide Shabbat for Jewish education in which all rabbis of all groups and all denominations speak about the need to give generously and fund Jewish day schools;
- Restaurants and food establishments have a week for Jewish day schools in which all families that have a child enrolled in a Jewish day school receive a 10% discount and 10% of all profits are directed towards Jewish education;
- We create a challenge among philanthropists of significant means to try and raise $100 million towards Jewish education in which people are challenged to join an ever-growing list of individuals who make mega gifts towards specific schools or towards a general larger fund that could be setup;
- We ask families to allocate 1% of their estates towards Jewish education and we begin an online list of all people who agree to participate;
All of this can be done working together with collective collaboration among all schools, all rabbis and all community leaders. I truly believe that Toronto will become the model and leading city for our community-wide responses to the tuition crisis that is plaguing all cities throughout North America and I believe other cities will then follow what we are doing.
We owe it to our children and grandchildren to make sure that our educational institutions are strong, vibrant and that the next generation will be able to afford to send their children to Jewish day schools.
On behalf of my wife, Leba and the entire Or Chaim/Ulpana faculty and administration, please accept my very best wishes for a Chag Kasher VeSameach to you and your entire family.
Warm Regards,
Rabbi Seth Grauer
Rosh Yeshiva / Head of School