February 6, 2012: Core community issues like Jewish education need to be addressed by every succeeding generation

By Michael Regenstreif

Last year in this space in our May 30 issue, I mentioned my attendance at the follow-up session to April’s openOttawa symposium, the initiative aimed at engaging Ottawa’s young Jewish adults with the community and providing assistance to the 20- to 35-year-old demographic group in their quest to find new ways to express themselves Jewishly that are relevant to them.

I mentioned that I couldn’t help but be reminded of how similar the discussion was – minus, perhaps, the Facebook, Twitter and website references – to discussions I was party to in Montreal during the 1970s and ‘80s when I was in that age group. I also noted that mine was hardly the first generation to have had such discussions.

Expressions like “the more things change, the more they stay the same” and “everything old is new again” become clichés because there’s a ring of truth to them.

I was reminded of that when I read the editorial, “Educating The Next Man’s Children,” which appeared in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin 71 years ago this week in the issue of February 7, 1941.

The piece is about the importance of Jewish education to Jewish continuity and is an appeal to parents in Ottawa’s Jewish community to send their children to Jewish schools. Variations on the thinking expressed in that editorial more than seven decades ago are at the heart of the arguments on behalf of Jewish education in Ottawa made by today’s educators and community leaders.

Jewish education and ensuring the present and future viability of both day schools and supplementary schools are a high priority for the Jewish Federation of Ottawa in the face of declining enrolment over a period of many years. Witness both the Federation Report by Steven Kimmel and the From the Pulpit column by Rabbi Howard Finkelstein on the opposite page.

Ottawa’s Jewish schools of 71 years ago faced some of the same challenges faced by today’s schools. Some of the grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s Jewish school students – and potential students – were likely objects of that 1941 appeal. I suspect today’s students will see similar appeals aimed at their grandchildren and great-grandchildren many decades from now.

Revitalizing and redefining Jewish life has always been the job of each succeeding generation and part of that process has been ensuring that Jewish education remains both relevant to contemporary times and true to its traditions. The community leaders and Jewish educators understood that in 1941; today’s community leaders and Jewish educators understand that even more.