Joseph Klarman, world head of Youth Aliya, told the National Board of Hadassah meeting here that the majority of the children being served by his organization are from disadvantaged Israeli homes rather than new immigrants because this is where the major problem now lies. He said of the 16,000 children who will be in Youth Aliya facilities when school starts in September only 3000 are olim.
Klarman said he recommended to the Jewish Agency Assembly last June that a committee be set up to devise a five-year plan for Youth Aliya. He said he believed that in five years Youth Aliya will be able to take care of 20,000-25,000 children from disadvantaged homes in Israel.
DISADVANTAGED IN CULTURAL, SPIRITUAL ‘ABYSS’
Removing these children from the poverty areas and educating them in Youth Aliya schools is “aliya in its second meaning,” Klarman yesterday told the 2500 delegates attending Hadassah’s 61st annual convention here. “Causing those who live in distress to ascend from a cultural and spiritual abyss” is aliya too, he said. “I am using the word ‘abyss’ and not the more moderate word ‘gap’ which is usually mentioned in contexts dealing with the culturally deprived because of the really abysmal difference between these children and the standard to which we wish to bring them.”
Klarman, in his talk to the Hadassah board and later to the full convention, said that although he has been unable to get the figures these culturally deprived children number in the thousands and maybe even in the hundreds of thousands. He said they have a feeling of rejection, alienation and deprivation from Israeli society “because they have failed to gain a respectable role in this society.”
He said this was due to a lack of the education needed in a modern society. “I am afraid that we face the risk of the rise of two opposing Israeli societies and cultures–a situation which is most dangerous to our very existence,” he warned. “It is my conviction that Youth Aliya with its vast experience in child care is obligated to tackle this problem.”
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