Transnational Religion, Religious Schools, and the Dilemna of Public Funding for Jewish Education: The Case of Ontario

The search for public funding for Ontario Jewish day schools is examined in the context of the increasing role of transnational networks as aspects of religious life. Various scholars (Barber, 1993; Huntington, 1996; Kepel, 1994; Lawrence, 1996 [1989]) have interpreted the recent revival of transnational religious movements as indications of a shift towards a communal identification which challenges identification with the nation-state. In some versions, religious communalism is seen as a movement towards a non-Western (or anti-Western) form of modernization. I