$100,000 gift from Joe Gutnick secures Adelaide school
Adelaide’s Massada College has received a $100,000 gift from mining magnate Rabbi Joe Gutnick which will secure its immediate financial future.
Joe Gutnick
President of the Jewish Community Council of South Australia, Norman Schueler told J-Wire: “This is wonderful news for our community. DEWR has funds in place for the school’s survival…conditional on the community satisfying them that we have done our bit to raise money for the school too.”
DEWR [the Federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations] had given the school until December 17 to raise adequate funds or it would shut off the school’s financial supply.
Following an emergency meeting involving the Executive Council of Australian Jewry the school earned a reprieve.
Schueler added: “This is not the first time Yosse Gutnick has come to the school’s aid….he is a very far-sighted man.”
Gutnick told J-Wire: “I am delighted to help any Jewish school anywhere in Australia which finds itself in strife and struggling to survive. The future is our children.”
He added: “I have a special attachment to Adelaide. My father used to travel there to lead the prayers for the Chagim and was also a regular visitor when they needed a rabbi to officiate at a wedding.”
ECAJ president Robert Goot told J-Wire last month that the loss of the school could well be “a fatal blow for the Adelaide Jewish community”.
The funds have been pledged over a two year period.
