Last week, Lisa Popik Coll and Gail Norry of Prizmah penned an excellent essay in eJewishPhilanthropy discussing “the next billion-dollar gift.” Calling attention to the epic donations of Ruth Gottesman and Michael Bloomberg to the Einstein and Hopkins medical schools to permanently eliminate tuition, they challenged the Jewish community to consider how such super-philanthropy could similarly transform the accessibility of Jewish education. The authors appropriately focused on the many Jewish children who are tragically missing out on a Jewish education due to the barrier to entry posed by the cost of tuition.
But that critical issue is only part of the problem, because even those families who do send their children to day schools at all costs experience an attendant strain on household finances that has a profound impact on individual and family life.