Klarman Outlines Plans for Absorption of 4,500 Poor Children

"The kibbutzim can offer much to the Israeli child in search of rehabilitation, as well as to the new immigrant," according to world director of Youth Aliyah, Joseph Klarman. "The renaissance of Youth Aliyah’s children’s groups in the kibbutzim," he added, "will benefit Youth Aliyah, its children and the kibbutzim themselves." Klarman submitted this view in a report to Hadassah’s Youth Aliyah National Board in which he elaborated on his recent plan for the additional absorption by Israel of 4,500 children "of culturally deprived backgrounds." Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, is holding its 57th annual national convention here. Klarman said the program would cost around IL 24 million. Even though the Israeli pound has now been devalued, its American equivalent dropping from 28,6 cents to 23,8 cents, Klarman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the IL 24 million sum would remain as the budget for the new absorption program. The proposed budget was projected before the devaluation occurred. (The JTA Daily News Bulletin’s Aug. 13 report that the program would cost the equivalent of $575 million was incorrect. Under the old conversion rule, it would have been equal to around $6.9 million; under the new rate it is equal to around $5.7 million.)

Of the 4,500 additional children to be absorbed, Klarman continued, 1,000 will go to Kibbutzim during the next school year at a cost of IL 2.7 million ($771,000 under the old rate, $643,000 under the new rate), with the other 3,500 to be taken in the following school year. Each of the 10 new day centers will take in 210 students. The cost for building these prefabricated centers and maintaining them for one year will be IL 6,869,000 ($1.97 million under the old rate, $1.64 million under the new rate). The cost for building or renovating 31 dormitories and maintaining them for one year will be IL 15,125,000 ($4.3 million old, $3.6 million new). An allocation by Hadassah of $400,000 to build and equip a day center in Jerusalem for underprivileged Jewish and Arab youths was announced yesterday by the organization’s president, Mrs. Max Schenk. She added criticism of American Jewish leaders who engage in "summit sermonizing" about Israel’s internal difficulties, declaring that they "reside in comfort in the United States, where pollution, slums, poverty and violence coexist with luxury, wealth and technological development." A resolution passed at the Hadassah Medical Organization plenary demanded that the World Health Organization cease processing political measures, such as the anti-Israel resolutions it has adopted at three consecutive meetings. Another resolution expressed "deepest admiration" for Israel’s "humane" treatment of surrendering Jordanian terrorists.