Eighty percent of all Mexican Jewish children are enrolled in a network of day schools provided for the entire community both in Mexico City and the two principal provincial centers, Guadalajara and Monterey, where there are sizeable Jewish populations, it was reported here today by I. Z. Berebichez, Secretary-General of the Central Jewish Committee of Mexico, Mexican Jewry’s representative body. He said that the high enrollment of Jewish children was primarily due to thorough planning initiated about two decades ago.
Mr. Berebichez, who is attending a series of World Jewish Congress meetings in New York, said that his community had foreseen that there would be a dearth of qualified Jewish school teachers as a result of the decimation of European Jewry. The community then established a seminary where today 70 young women are being trained as Jewish teachers. The Mexican Jewish leader added that there was one male among the student teachers.
The Mexican Jewish leader reported that about 6, 000 Jewish children were enrolled in the day-school network, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, in the main cities. In all, Mexico has about 30, 000 Jews. The 6, 000 children are currently obtaining a bi-lingual education — Spanish-Hebrew or Spanish-Yiddish, according to the schools they attend –together with a thorough grounding in Jewish history and culture. Some are tri-lingual, learning Yiddish, Spanish and Hebrew. The curricula of the various day schools all fulfill the governmental education requirements and graduates of the Jewish school system go on to Mexico’s colleges and universities.
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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.
