Dr. William Haber, president of the American Ort Federation, disclosed today that the World Ort Union was building a new school in Marseilles, twice as large as the old one, in preparation for an anticipated substantial immigration of Algerian Jews to France.
Speaking at the 16th national convention of the Women’s American Ort, Dr. Haber added he doubted that the new school “and all the rest we have done to integrate. North African Jews in France” would be adequate preparation “for the kind of mass immigration that we may soon face in France.”
He told the delegates that Ort schools in France would continue to grow both because of the North African influx and because “of the population explosion of a new generation of Jewish youth. “He added that Ort facilities in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe were “a vital factor in strengthening Jewish identification and communal belonging.”
Dr. Haber also reported that eight United States missions in African countries had informed the International Corporation Administration in Washington that they wanted a survey of vocational training needs in those countries to be performed by Ort specialists. He said teams of Ort experts were sent to those countries and that their field studies were complete. Their report would be submitted soon to the ICA, he said.
“The surveys,” Dr. Haber pointed out, “were an unusual assignment” for a Jewish organization because the scope of the studies “called for laying down the basic principles on which coordinated national systems of vocational education could be established” and on how new nations “should proceed in meeting their technical training problems.”
He told the delegates that whatever the future may hold for the Jews of Morocco and Tunis, he felt that the work performed by Ort in the past and that scheduled for the future “has transformed these communities so that they can face the future.”
He reported that Ort student enrollment in Israel was growing at the rate of about 30 percent a year, adding that Ort schools them were enrolling 10,000 students a year and that the figure would be 15,000 “before long.” He said there would be 3,000 apprentices in training in Ort schools in Israel and that there would be “five and six thousand not many years from now.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
