French Jewry establishes major fund to expand Jewish education

French Jewish organization have joined together to found a new 25m. Euros fund to expand private Jewish education for French Jewry, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
 
The new Fondation Gordin, created by the Fonds Social Juif Unifie (United Jewish Social Funds), the Foundation for Holocaust Remembrance, the Rothschild Foundation, the Sacta Rashi Fund and private donors, will focus on refurbishing school buildings and constructing new schools.
 
According to French Jewish businessman and philanthropist Pierre Besnainou, president of the United Social Funds, one-third of France 's estimated 100,000 Jewish children study in Jewish private schools, another third in public schools and the last third in Christian private schools. Some one-half of private-educated Jewish children study in Christian schools because, Besnainou believes, the schools are better.

Lost in the desert

Often, and especially with politicians, what is not said in a speech is more important than what is.

The only discernible actionable statement to come out of the speeches of the three non-Russian-speaking Israeli politicians at Wednesday's Tribute to Soviet Jewry was about bringing more Russian-speaking Jews to Israel. This speaks volumes about the extent to which Israeli officialdom is blind to the broadest and most worrying trends of the Jewish world.

This was noticed by the Russian-speakers in the room at the Jerusalem International Convention Center and by veterans of Jewish organizational life. This is significant because the deepest troubles afflicting world Jewry today - assimilation, lack of identification with Judaism and Israel - have hit the Russian-speakers hardest. And Israeli officialdom's only solution on hand seems to be encouraging everyone everywhere to make aliya.

'Old-School' Chicago

My first visit to the Chicago Jewish federation is an impressive experience. Housed in a new building with a state-of-the-art lobby, the federation looks like anything but its reputation of a traditionalist old-school Jewish institution.
 
Jewish federations around America have been changing in recent years to accommodate donors’ demands for transparency and more "hands-on" giving, sending more money to individual projects chosen by donors rather than to core budgets of national and international institutions. By 2007, many of the large international programs run by Jewish organizations, particularly the JDC and the Jewish Agency, struggle to maintain programming against an ever-dropping budget, as donors seek to give to causes that appeal to them personally. Thus, ulpanim across the Former Soviet Union - the backbone of the tenuous Jewish renaissance in that part of the world - are in danger of shutting down as the Jewish Agency contemplates a 50 percent cutback in their budget.