NEW YORK (JTA) — A Solomon Schechter high school in New Jersey has received a $15 million challenge gift and will be renamed for one of its co-founders.
Daniel Och, the chairman of the Birthright Israel Foundation, and his wife, Jane, are presenting the gift to the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange to help provide tuition relief for middle-class families and for capital improvements, according to The New Jersey Jewish News.
In honor of Daniel Och’s mother, a co-founder of the school with her husband, Michael, and several other families in 1965, the school will be renamed the Golda Och Academy. Golda Och died in January.
The school will remain a member of the Conservative movement’s Solomon Schechter school system. It will have a rededication ceremony on Dec. 6.
The gift, the largest ever received by the school, will be used in part to create an endowment providing $1.25 million annually to ease the tuition burden for as many as 230 families.
Two years ago Och, the CEO of Och-Ziff Capital, made a $2 million gift to the school.
