LITERATURE:
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Operation Jewish Education/The 5% Mandate is a very straightforward concept. It is a program attempting to help Jewish day schools and yeshivas help themselves. It calls upon the Jewish community to adopt a "standard of normative behavior" that every Jew set aside and donate 5% of his or her assets upon death or during his or her lifetime to a Jewish educational endowment fund of their choice. Every Jew must plan to give a piece of his or her worldly possessions towards the Jewish education of the next generation of children. We need every rabbi, every literary personality, every board president and every organizational trustee committed to The 5% Mandate, and to publicly declare that in order to save the Jewish future, everyone must comply. The 5% Mandate would be each person’s final mitzvah on this earth. Since we all know that we can not take our material possessions with us to the next world, participation in The 5% Mandate is indeed a small economic price to pay for the final mitzvah.

The underlying premise is that everyone must participate. This is a mitzvah aseh, an affirmative obligation of every member of the community, this is the "machtzit hashekel’ (half shekel tax) of our generation. It is every Jew’s obligation to provide for the education of the next generation of young people. Each must give their 5%.

Honor rolls must be published with the names of every individual who signs the letter of intent to memorialize the performance of this final mitzvah of each individual’s life. These honor rolls will become living testimonials for posterity, recording each Jew’s commitment to this mitzvah. It is a clear affirmation of the preservation of Torah education. We must create a sense of peer pressure in a positive sense. If sufficient individuals say often enough that there is a 5% Mandate, it will become a reality. When this mandate becomes a reality, within a few short years there will be ample monies in endowment funds in each school so that every school can survive just on the interest that is generated.