More than 40% of Canadian Jews have attended Jewish Day Schools– also called Hebrew Day Schools. In fact, in Toronto — with about 220,000 Jews (more than half of Canada’s Jewish population of 393,500) – there are 39 Jewish Day Schools* or private parochial schools for elementary and high school students. Across Canada, there are Jewish Day Schools in 8 major cities—74 schools* in all.
When I was a child growing up in Toronto, I went to a public school as did the vast majority of my generation. Our parents, many of them immigrants to Canada, wanted their kids to have a well-rounded, outward-facing general education, and shun the, well, parochial, inward-facing, nature of parochial education. Only the most religious (and frankly the least progressive) of Toronto’s Jews sent their kids to Jewish Day schools. It simply wasn’t a “thing”. That was because most Jews recognized that public schools were superior to the parochial ones, by dint of the high level of stable government funding, better qualified teachers, and the general idea in the 60s that Jewish religious practices could be learned at synagogue on weekends or in after-school “talmud torahs.” Some say part of the upsurge in Jewish parochial education is the failure of public confidence in public schools– and the search for private alternatives even at great personal expense. Another factor is some parents’ worries about antisemitism in the public schools. That concern has been carefully curated and promoted by the establishment Jewish community and the Troika. As academic and author Sheryl Nestel asks in her monograph The Use and Misuse of Antisemitism Statisics in Canada
But how accurate are B’nai Brith’s claims? Upon close examination, it turns out that B’nai Brith’s interpretation of the state of antisemitism in Canada is misleading at best, perhaps deliberately so.
No matter, the pro-Israel Jewish community continues to the feed the flames of antisemitism by pushing the community inward, suspicious of outsiders. Jewish Day Schools are considered by some a bulwark against antisemitism.
Today, tuition at some Jewish Day Schools costs as much as $25,000 per year per student, usually discounted if two or more children from the same family attend. Since the start of the century, Canada’s largest private high school – bigger than Upper Canada College (UCC), or Lower Canada College– TanenbaumCHAT, has declared receiving $300 million in direct donations. The school has received $60 million from other registered charities. With around 1/3 covered by taxpayers, the total public assistance to TanenbaumCHAT amounts to $100 million since 2000.
What exactly do students learn at the Jewish Day Schools? Other than the part of the curriculum prescribed by the provincial department of education, first and foremost, students learn to speak, read and write in Hebrew. The schools “also offer a strong Jewish education, focused on Torah study, Jewish history … And, they aim to instill traditional Jewish values and a strong Jewish identity in their students.” Today, as Jewish educator Seymour Epstein* notes wryly, “Synagogues once produced schools, and now schools are sprouting mini-synagogues.”
Focus of Jewish Day Schools
But the real focus at Jewish Day Schools is support and love for Israel.
Jewish parochial schools are similar in US and Canada, and as a teacher with experience at six Jewish Day Schools in New York notes, “Zionism is messaged in these schools as the most essential attribute of our students’ identity. It’s a huge problem.”
As a 2014 report Hearts and Minds: Israel in North American Jewish Day Schools** reports:
“In the schools we observed, visual cues about Israel are omnipresent, ranging from photographs of Israeli heroes and leaders, to maps of Israel, Hebrew aphorisms about Israel and, of course, Israeli flags – all of which may be found in many classrooms where Jewish studies are taught as well as in other public spaces. In some schools, special areas are set aside to commemorate Israel. One school, for example, has a large mural commemorating fallen Israeli soldiers who had been alumni of its Israeli twin school; another school has created an Israel courtyard at the center of the school structure complete with a large map of Israel made out of wood-chippings. Many schools have given over public space outside of classrooms for students to decorate walls with murals depicting aspects of life in Israel. In others, we observed bulletin boards with news about Israel posted.”
Canadian author and playwright Jonathan Garfinkel in his excellent book, Ambivalence, Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide*** writes about his days attending the Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto. He writes that his teachers were always using the holocaust as a lesson as to why Jews are still living under perpetual threat, and why Israel is special and must be fully supported. Garfinkel recalls his teacher announcing:
“From the ashes of Europe we rose to build a nation in the desert and swamps. We arrived, cultivated and liberated the Middle East. Israel was not a land of milk and honey – we were the milk and honey. The land was fallow and empty.”
TanenbaumCHAT – fundraising for Israel
TanenbaumCHAT– Canada’s largest private school
Canada’s biggest private high school is a Jewish Day School, TanenbaumCHAT in Toronto. It is a registered Canadian charity which in the view of journalist Yves Engler “has long promoted the apartheid state. According to TanenbaumCHAT’s statement of purpose, ‘Israel engagement pervades our curricular and extracurricular programming and it is a shared vision — part of the consciousness of all our teachers and educators. Through connecting with our staff, guests and visiting speakers, our students develop relationships with Israeli peers and other Israeli role models. Students enjoy special Israel weeks and IDF Days.”
IDF Days raise money for the Israeli military programs. According to Yves Engler:
The school invites Israeli officials to speak often at the school. “Last year Israel’s minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, visited the TanenbaumCHAT school as part of an initiative to substantially increase Israel’s investment in North American Jewish schools ($53 million was announced).”
That idea of Israel being the only “democracy” in the region has worn pretty thin with the IOF (Israeli Offence Forces) murdering tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children, the disabled and other civilians. The killings are on an industrial scale. Yet the parochial school students pledge to support Israel no matter what. The students at TanenbaumCHAT high school learn to accept and rejoice in everything about Israel.
The school has received large amounts in tax-deductible donations. Since 2000, according to Engler, TanenbaumCHAT has declared receiving $300 million in direct donations. Additionally, the school has received $60 million from other registered charities. With around 1/3 covered by taxpayers, the total public assistance to TanenbaumCHAT amounts to $100 million since 2000.
The veteran (and anonymous) teacher who worked at six Jewish Day Schools in New York noted,
“You walk into the building and see Israeli flags hanging all over the place. Lessons are delivered in Hebrew…. Children sing HaTikvah in the morning with enforced gusto. Israeli soldiers regularly address the student body. Children wear kippot and hoodies emblazoned with the logo of the Israel Defense Forces.”
Taken from Toronto Heschel School site, you can readthis
If the young Jewish School students are indoctrinated from the earliest days to revere Israel, to want to make aliyah (to go there to live), to approve of the Israeli military and actually join it after high school — then it is a short jump to defend what Israel is doing to Gaza and now Lebanon —how 42,000 Palestinians murdered in Gaza are justified.
Bnei Akiva Jewish Schools in Toronto
At Bnei Akiva Schools in Toronto estimates are that “a quarter of the [graduating] class” joined the Israeli military. As Bnei Akiva Schools note on their Facebook page, “upon graduation, students typically spend at least one or more years of study in Israel, and many serve in the IDF.” Bnei Akiva could be violating Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act when the school encourages and facilitates its grads to sign up with the IDF. According to Engler, the Foreign Enlistment Act states that “any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.”
According to Engler, two Bnei Akiva Schools in Toronto (one for boys and one for girls), “received $3.5 million dollars in federal government grants in 2021 and 2022. …The school has received more in public subsidy through donations from other registered charities with about a quarter of its nearly $10 million budget coming from other taxpayer-subsidized charities. Additionally, Bnei Akiva grants nearly $5 million dollars a year in tax receipts to donors through its own charitable status.”
When Jewish Day School students graduate and go on to university – two different things happen. The young people continue to rally, support Israel and everything it does; they “walk with Israel”, they go on the “March of the Living”, they go on Birthright and they work with the powerful Jewish community leaders to shut down and silence discussion about Palestine. Or, as has been happening since 7 Oct, 2023 and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, the students start to question their blind spot about Israel – and begin to challenge their Jewish Day School’s rather blinkered education. More and more young people seem to be doing just that. After Israel’s year long war on Gaza, many Jewish students are starting to join forces with Jewish organizations like Independent Jewish Voices, If Not Now etc. to support social justice and Palestinian human rights. As we know, many of the students at the university encampments were young Jews – who wanted a ceasefire, opposed genocide and cared deeply for Palestinians’ lives.
That should scare all those who support Jewish Day Schools.
Notes:
* Discipline, Devotion and Dissent: Jewish, Catholica nd Islamic Schooling in Canada, ed. by Graham P McDonough, Nadeem A memon and Avi I Mintz (2013: Wilfrid Laurier Press).
** Hearts and Minds: Israel in North American Jewish Day Schools by Alex Pomson, Jack Wertheimer and Hagit Hacohen Wolf (2014: Avi Chai Foundation and Rosov Consulting). You can read it online here.
*** Ambivalence, Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide by Jonathan Garfinkel (2007: Viking Press).
Photo at the top: Beirut, Lebanon: Some buildings were still burning on Saturday morning (28 Sept. 2024), with smoke billowing over several locations in south Beirut, also known as Dahiyeh. (Credit: AFP)
