Jonathan Ross Goodman wants Jewish grandchildren. The Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist believes that sending your child to a Jewish high school is like stacking the deck with aces. “The research is clear - attending a Jewish high school is the second-highest predictor of marrying someone Jewish. Day school alumni have a better chance of pulling an ace and sustaining the Jewish community.”
Jonathan loves learning and reminds us that in the shtetl, the first thing they built were schools. “We are the people of the book.” His mother, Rosalind Goodman, of blessed memory, was his role model. “She loved life. She was a professional volunteer — the chairperson of everything Jewish: Hadassah, Federation, Jewish National Fund. She even dressed up as a blue box for JNF!” She taught him that, “You’re not put on this earth just to take up space; you’re here to make a difference.”
Goodman says that he feels blessed to be in a position to help. He agrees with Montreal’s real estate developing philanthropist Jonathan Wener’s statement, “Vision without financing is a hallucination.” He believes that anyone who wants a Jewish education should be able to get one and recognizes that affordability is a factor. When he set out to re-build and rebrand Montreal’s Herzliah High School as a no-compromise private secular school killer, he worried that an under-resourced school would not attract full-paying families critical to financial sustainability He helped raise $50 million to develop a state-of-the-art, Jewish high school. “It’s now the superstar of the Montreal Jewish community operating at full capacity churning out future Jewish grandchildren.”
“People have to be taught to be generous,” Goodman states. “Gratitude is highly correlated to happiness, and tzedakah supercharges gratitude.” As Cofounder and Executive Chair of pharmaceutical company Knight Therapeutics Inc. (TSE:gud), he jokes that selling drugs pays for his addiction to tzedakah. He says, “You just have to begin to help others. No one ever said on their deathbed that they should have worked harder. They all say they should have spent more time with family and friends and giving back to the community.”