Jewish Businessman Gives $10,000 to Rescued Chilean Miners
A Chilean Jewish mining executive has written $10,000 checks to each of the 33 miners that are being rescued from a collapsed mine in Chile after being trapped for more than two months.
Leonardo Farkas reportedly gave the checks in the miners’ names to each of the families and set up a separate fund to collect donations, The Associated Press reported. The money is more than some of the miners earn in a year.
By early Wednesday afternoon Chilean time, about half the miners had been pulled from the San Jose gold and copper mine, where they had been trapped since its collapse on Aug. 5.
Without complications, all the miners are expected to be pulled to freedom by Thursday, according to reports. The Chilean miners reportedly have survived the longest of anyone buried underground.
Farkas is a well-known philanthropist in Chile who appears annually on a telethon run by the country’s major television networks to raise funds to help children with developmental disabilities. In 2008 he donated about $1.5 million to the cause.
Farkas owns businesses in several industries, with mining comprising the most important of his holdings.
He was sued recently by his Australian partners, accused of inappropriately using company funds for personal charitable donations.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
