Over 2, 000 Americans from all over the United States and Canada will participate in a number of work and study projects in Israel this summer of from seven to ten weeks duration under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for Israel, it was announced today by Mrs. Rose L. Halprin, chairman of the Jewish Agency-American Section. In addition, several hundred youth will leave this summer for year-round study projects in Israel.
“The Jewish Agency for Israel,” said Mrs. Halprin, “will be host to several thousand Americans in Israel this summer, mainly young men and women. Spearheaded by the Education and Culture Departments of the Jewish Agency-American Section and the American Zionist Youth Foundation, the American teenagers have enrolled for this summer’s work and study projects through the American Zionist Youth Foundation, various national Jewish youth organizations, a number of Jewish Community Centers and Synagogues throughout the country, and the American Section of the Jewish Agency. It is our belief that the inspirational impact of a summer in Israel for these teenagers will do much to counteract the assimilative tendencies that now exist in many areas of American Jewish life. In addition several hundred Jewish educators will spend the summer in Israel on study projects.”
Over 1, 000 youthful visitors to Israel will make their trips on programs sponsored by the American Zionist Youth Foundation. In cooperation with Young Judaea, United Synagogue Youth, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, the National Foundation of Temple Youth, Mizrachi Hatzair, Jr. Hadassah, Hillel Foundation, the National Jewish Welfare Board and the Student Zionist Organization, 752 young men and women will participate in the Foundation’s Israel Summer Institute Work Program. This seven week program includes study programs in Israel with two weeks on a kibbutz, and up to three weeks of travel. An additional 165 college students are enrolled in the Summer-in-Kibbutz program which provides for seven weeks of work in a kibbutz in Israel, a ten-day tour of the country and ten days of free time in Israel.
The National Jewish Welfare Board, through its Jewish Community Center Youth Service Corps, and a program sponsored by New York’s 92nd Street YMHA, will send over a hundred Jewish youth to Beersheba and other settlement areas to aid in the integration of newly arrived immigrant children in Israel. The Jewish Agency for Israel will also be host to 29 directors, program directors and group workers from affiliated National Jewish Welfare Board Centers for a study tour designed to broaden their knowledge of Israel so they can improve and increase the Israel content of their programming in Jewish Community Centers throughout America.
The Agency’s Department of Education and Culture, in cooperation with various groups, will send over 650 individuals to Israel this summer. For the first time this year, a group of 29 sixteen-year-olds will be touring Israel under the auspices of the National Bar Mitzvah Club. This group is composed of youngsters who enrolled in the National Bar Mitzvah Club at the age of thirteen, generally with Bar Mitzvah gifts, and who in the following three years accumulated the funds making possible their Israeli pilgrimage. The National Bar Mitzvah Club, in which wide-spread interest has developed in its three years of existence, will sponsor visits by considerably larger groups in 1967 and thereafter.
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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.
