Writing recently in the Canadian Jewish News<\/a>, columnist Rabbi Jay Kelman, while acknowledging \u00a0that it would cost $100 million a year to cut day school tuition in half, argued “that not one additional penny needs to be raised to enable Jewish education to be free in Toronto.”<\/p>\nHe explained the problem this way: “With millions being spent on communal infrastructure [a reference to three large Jewish community campuses being built or refurbished in the Toronto area], it\u2019s not certain that enough Jews will care 30 years from now to make use of all our wonderful new facilities. I\u2019m well aware that the Toronto community gives more support to Jewish education than any other and that there are many pressing needs besides education. So as we hear repeatedly, there just isn\u2019t enough money to solve this crisis. After all, how many times can we go back to the same few very wealthy and very generous people and ask for more?”<\/p>\n
But, Kelman said, “A perusal of available public records shows that billions of dollars are sitting in charitable foundations of well-known Jewish philanthropists. That money has already been given away. Unfortunately, very little of it actually goes to charity each year, as capital preservation reigns supreme. If we could change that mindset, the crisis would be solved with the stroke of a pen.”<\/p>\n
This implies eating away at capital, something foundations are loathe to do, preferring instead to use interest and investment income to ensure that funds are available to pay for future needs.<\/p>\n
Kelman has an answer for that potential objection.<\/p>\n
“The amounts sitting in foundations are so large that all priorities can be paid for, provided one does not feel that capital must be preserved indefinitely. Furthermore… as a condition of benefiting from greatly lowered (or free) day school fees, parents can be required to buy life insurance plans at a fraction of the cost of day school fees, the proceeds of which would replenish any ‘capital depletion.’ \u201d<\/p>\n
This is an idea worth exploring, although it does have some drawbacks.<\/p>\n
The main one is the reluctance of foundations to whittle down their capital reserves. Another\u00a0is that there’s a bias in the community against subsidizing the middle class. (This mirrors a larger neoliberal trend in\u00a0western society in which the middle class is being squeezed and the gap between super-rich and very poor continues to widen.)<\/p>\n
But Kelman’s idea won’t fly as long as the Jewish community lobbies for government funding that’s unlikely to ever materialize.<\/p>\n
Of course, if the Jewish community were to pursue Kelman’s plan, it wouldn’t need state subsidies for its schools.<\/p>\n
Pardon the pun, but it’s time to take that leap of faith.