Mizrachi Women’s Convention Votes $1,295,000 Budget for Coming Year

The Mizrachi Women’s Organization of America today voted a budget for the coming year totaling $1,295,000 to maintain and expand the organization’s network of institutions, including the expansion of facilities at various schools and institutions in Israel.

The budget was adopted at the organization’s 38th annual national convention which was addressed today by Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin and Rabbi Mordecai Kirshblum, president of the Religious Zionists of America.

Senator Proxmire told the delegates that despite Egyptian attempts to isolate Israel, the Jewish State had succeeded in expanding its technical assistance program to almost 80 developing nations. Terming Israel’s program in Latin America a “magnificent supplement to the Alliance for Progress,” the Senator lauded Israel’s cooperation with the Organization of American States and the training of Latin Americans in agriculture.

Rabbi Kirahblum, who returned recently from a visit to Israel, told the convention that “any reported news of stress and tension in connection with religious life in Jerusalem is only temporary.”

An intensive pilot educational program to help close the gap between European and Afro-Asian Jewish immigrants to Israel was approved by the convention, Mrs. S. Deborah Ebin, of Brooklyn, an honorary national president reported that more than one-third of the children of Oriental communities who complete eight years of elementary school cannot read a newspaper or a simple book; cannot write a legible letter; and cannot perform simple arithmetic problems.

Mrs. Avraham Harman, wife of the Israel Ambassador, was honored here today with the “medallion award” of the women’s religious-Zionist organization. Mrs. Harman, a former member of the Israel delegation to the United Nations and a leading participant in UNICEF, was cited for “contributions to the welfare of Israel’s youth and the children of the world.”