Jewish High School Students Spent 7 Weeks in Community Projects in 2 Southern Towns Aiding Poor Peop

Twenty-two high school students returned to New York Tuesday after seven weeks of renovating other people’s homes and helping in community projects in two southern towns as part of the American Jewish Society for Service’s (AISS) 30th summer of secular social work.

The returning students, who paid $450 each to participate in the summer program, said they had no intuitions about having solved the major economic and social problems of our times. But they expressed satisfaction in providing badly needed services to a small number of disadvantaged people.

“I was glad to be able to help those less fortunate than myself,” Deborah Friedman said during a press conference here. The high school senior was one of 17 mainly Jewish people working with needy residents of Goldsham, North Carolina. Her group worked closely with Operation Bootstrap, a veteran grassroots community action program, repairing 14 deteriorated homes of elderly and poor residents who were for the most part employed by the town’s tobacco industry

A CHANCE TO SERVE HUMANITY

AJSS has carried out work projects in over 20 states, aiding poor rural Blocks and whites in Maine, Vermont and Minnesota, impoverished migrant workers in Texas and Ohio, flooding victims in Connecticut, and elderly citizens in Delaware and lowa.

Modeled after the American Friends Service Committee’s past social action program, the organization was started in 1951 to give “idealist young Jews” a chance to carry out “service to humanity,” one of the fundamentals of Judaism, said Henry Kohn, chairman and founder of AJSS.

“We’re interested in giving young people the chance to serve,” Kohn added. Interested students are interviewed by AJSS counselors to see if they can fit into the program, but Kohn said nearly all who apply are accepted.

SLAVERY-LIKE CONDITIONS

Steve Goldman’s initial reaction to the living conditions of poor Blacks in Jeanerette, Louisiana was one of disbelief. The New Jersey student said it reminded him of slavery, since he witnessed the sight of beautiful manors built overlooking run-down shacks occupied by sugar cane farmworkers. “It was amazing to see how it still goes on,” Goldman said of the sharp contrast between poor Blacks and wealthy white form owners. “It’s pretty sad.”

The 12 student workers of Jeanerette were often greeted with hostility and suspicion by the residents (which was not the code in Goldsboro), the students said. The political climate in the town was tense as a result of the radical attempts of Sister Anne Catherine, the director of the Southern Mutual Help Association, to improve the living conditions of the farmworkers.

“These poor people were anti-government and pro-war,” said another student, adding that the group was instructed to do their job quietly and then leave whenever they met hostility. The Jeanerette group worked with the Association in rebuilding homes, and they also worked in a recreation program for Black youths.

“We’ve served every poor group in America,” regardless of race or religion, commented Kohn. And for the students involved, he said, “it has been a life-shaping experience.”