Rabbi Moshe Gutnick Wins Right to Fight Sacking

SYDNEY, Australia — A prominent Sydney rabbi has blocked his congregation from making him redundant, successfully arguing he should be subject to Jewish, rather than secular employment laws.

Moshe Gutnick took the Mizrachi Synagogue, his employer, to the NSW Supreme Court yesterday for an urgent hearing ahead of a proposed meeting last night to make him redundant.

Rabbi Gutnick, the brother of mining magnate “Diamond Joe” Gutnick, has been at the Bondi-based synagogue since 1987. He says he has life tenure and that if his position is terminated he should be entitled to a payout of more than $1 million.

But he is arguing that only a Jewish tribunal can determine whether he can be made redundant — because of the contractual right the life tenure confers.

The members of the Mizrachi Synagogue — effectively the congregation — were due to meet at 8pm yesterday at an extraordinary general meeting to discuss finances and vote on a resolution to make the rabbi’s position redundant.

The synagogue says the rabbi should be treated like any other employee who is made redundant in difficult financial times.

The synagogue could be placed into administration today, its barrister said, if costs, such as the rabbi’s salary, were not immediately cut.

Jeremy Stoljar SC said the principle of life tenure, the Hazarka, “could not overwrite the ability on the part of the employer to make a position redundant”, particularly where that might lead to the synagogue trading while insolvent, which is against the Corporations Law.

Mr Stoljar said the meeting should be allowed to go ahead and then if the rabbi were made redundant and he believed he had a case, he could then take any action he saw fit.

But at 6.10pm, after a day of legal argument, judge Richard White directed the meeting not to hold a vote on the redundancy and referred the dispute to a Jewish tribunal for resolution.

“There is a serious issue to be tried that Hazarka applies unless it has been expressly excluded,” Justice White said.

“(Rabbi Gutnick) deposes that under Jewish law it is an established principle that a rabbi is to have Hazarka even without his employer’s granting him that status.”

Complicating the matter is that there is no contract in place that resolves the issue of whether or not Rabbi Gutnick has life tenure.

Justice White said Rabbi Gutnick was not an ordinary employee because of the spiritual nature of his employment.

“It seems to me that the balance of convenience favours this dispute being determined by a Jewish tribunal in accordance with Jewish law,” Justice White said.

Rabbi Gutnick gave an undertaking to the court to give up any entitlement to a salary while the issue was in dispute.