The Jewish National Fund received its largest donation ever this year, which it will use to establish a Center for Zionist Education and Advocacy, the organization said Thursday in a press release.
The $60 million trust is a gift from the estate of John Boruchin, a native of Poland who lost his family in the Holocaust and made his fortune from tract home building in California. Boruchin’s gift totaled almost half of the fund’s 2013 campaign, which raised $121 million.
The fund can’t draw on the trust yet, it said in the press release, and will assemble a committee of lay leaders under the leadership of President Jeffrey Levine to structure and monitor its use.
“John’s love of Jabotinsky and the State of Israel was foremost in his mind throughout his life,” Levine said in the release. “He believed with all his heart that he had to do everything to keep the land of Israel as the Jewish homeland. This trust is his lasting legacy and will help transform thousands of Jewish youth giving them a lasting connection to the land and people of Israel.”
Founded in 1901 to purchase land for a Jewish state in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, the JNF’s mission is the support of the state of Israel through education and the development and preservation of its land and water resources.
helenatjewishweek@gmail.com; @thesimplechild
