27 Facts About Moshe Gutnick

1.

Moshe D Gutnick is an Austrailan Orthodox rabbi, and a member of the ultra Orthodox Chabad Hasidic movement.

2.

Rabbi Gutnick is a senior member of the Beth Din in Sydney, Australia.

3.

Moshe Gutnick is currently President of the Rabbinical Council of Australia and New Zealand.

4.

Moshe Gutnick is the head of the NSW Kashrut Authority, the most widely known kosher authority in New South Wales.

5.

Moshe Gutnick formerly served as the rabbi of the Bondi Mizrachi Synagogue in Sydney.

6.

Moshe Gutnick's father, born in Ukraine, was Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, a Holocaust survivor.

7.

Moshe Gutnick was educated at the Yeshiva College and Yeshiva Gedolah in Melbourne, Australia.

8.

Moshe Gutnick continued his Rabbinic studies in New York and Montreal, and received semikhah from both the Rabbinical College of Canada and the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in New York.

9.

Moshe Gutnick received Yoden Yoden from Talmudist Rav Pinchus Hirschprung as well as Rabbi Zelig Sharfstein.

10.

Moshe Gutnick serves as a senior member of the Sydney Beth Din, which he joined in 1993.

11.

Moshe Gutnick has been aggressive in his condemnation of the practice of gett refusal, and is a strong supporter of Halachic prenuptial agreements.

12.

Moshe Gutnick worked with the Halachic Organ Donor Society in creating an Australian HODS card.

13.

At the time of the conviction, Moshe Gutnick was the president of RCANZ.

14.

Moshe Gutnick is the head of the NSW Kashrut Authority, the most widely known kosher authority in New South Wales, which operates under the auspices of the Beth Din.

15.

Moshe Gutnick criticized the Australian Jewish News in 2012 for printing advertising of non-kosher products, such as non-kosher challah to be used on Shabbat.

16.

In 2014 when a kosher restaurant ordered kosher meat from Melbourne, because the particular cut of meat was unavailable in Sydney, because according to the contract between the KA and the restaurant only meat that is killed under the supervision of the KA can be used, Moshe Gutnick confiscated the offending meat.

17.

Moshe Gutnick declared food prepared under the rival authority to be non-kosher.

18.

Moshe Gutnick said that people reporting abuse were ostracized mosers.

19.

Moshe Gutnick was the rabbi at the Bondi Mizrachi Synagogue in North Bondi from 1987 to 2009.

20.

Moshe Gutnick argued that the board had no right to make this decision and that communal rabbis have life tenure.

21.

Moshe Gutnick successfully obtained an interlocutory injunction in 2009 from the NSW Supreme Court, preventing his dismissal pending the ruling of a Beth Din "in accordance with Jewish law".

22.

Moshe Gutnick emerged with a ruling in his favour, and a payout including costs of close to $1 million.

23.

Moshe Gutnick wrote in defense of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who wrote Kosher Jesus in 2012, saying that while he agreed with some of what Boteach said and disagreed with other points: "The suggestion that [Boteach] is a heretic is simply ludicrous".

24.

Moshe Gutnick's greatness lay not in his physical strength or power but in his greatness of spirit.

25.

Moshe Gutnick is a former president of the Rabbinical Council of NSW.

26.

Moshe Gutnick is a former head of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia.

27.

Moshe Gutnick has defended Halal certification against its detractors, saying that if that were to be said about kosher it would be considered anti-Semitic, and it was an attack on religious rights.