Every family is facing increasing costs of food, energy, and the additional costs of participation in athletics and other extracurricular activities surrounding schooling. Jewish Families have an added burden: The cost of educating their children in the Jewish tradition.

The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven is cognizant of the financial strain that the cost of transmitting this education can have on members of the community. Jewish education programs including: preschool, day school, summer camp, and afternoon religious schools often force families to make a choice between providing for their families basic needs and providing their children with the rich array of Jewish experiences and opportunities to connect to the community at large that these types of education programs offer to participants. As a response, the Jewish Federation together with The Jewish Foundation and Department of Jewish Education created the Jewish Scholarship Initiative in 2005 to assist families in providing their children with a strong Jewish education. To date, JSI has distributed $115,000 to benefit approximately 100 Greater New Haven children.

“Learning, learning, learning: that is the secret to Jewish survival.” These words stated by the Zionist leader Ahad Ha’am in 1910, are indicative of the importance of education to Jewish continuity and community development. The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven recognizes the importance of education and learning to the development of a strong Jewish community and works together with local synagogues and communal agencies to offer a wide array of educational programs to a diversity of community members.

Through scholarship awards, the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven’s Jewish Scholarship Initiative seeks to enable qualifying members of the New Haven Jewish community to become more fully involved in programs and to encourage increased participation in Jewish communal life. For more information please contact Anat Weiner at the Department of Jewish Education at aweineewishnewhaven.org or 203 387-2424 x313.