New Zealand capital’s only Jewish day school to close
The only Jewish day school in New Zealand’s capital city
is closing.
Moriah School in Wellington will close its doors at the
end of 2012, its board announced.
In a letter last week to parents, the board said it had
“no option” but to close the school, which has fewer then 20 pupils ages 5 to
13.
“We simply do not have the resources to operate a full
Jewish day school,” the letter said.
But the board pledged to “enhance and expand” the Hebrew
school and said the decision did not affect the kindergarten, which is a
separate entity.
Moriah was founded in 1985, with almost 60 students at
its peak.
Its much-publicized 2008 project, to amass 1.5 million
buttons – each one representing a child murdered during the Holocaust – took
over two years to complete and attracted the attention of Prime Minister John
Key, the son of a Jewish refugee who escaped Austria on the eve of the
Holocaust. The collection will be given to the Wellington Holocaust Research
and Education Center.
Stephen Goodman, president of the New Zealand Jewish
Council, said he regretted the closure because the loss of Jewish education “diminishes
us all.”
Wellington is the second largest Jewish community after
Auckland, which is home to the majority of the country’s estimated 7,000 Jews
as well as its last Jewish school, Kadimah College.
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