More than 100,000 students, 70,000 of them in Israel, participated in ORT educational and vocational training programs in 25 countries during 1980, according to Sidney Leiwant, president of the American ORT Federation, in his report prepared for delivery to some 800 delegates attending the national conference of the Federation beginning tomorrow.
Leiwant stated that “despite the closing down of ORT schools in Iran because of the Khomeini revolution, the international ORT educational network continues to be by far the largest Jewish day school system in the world.”
ORT is today “the basic educational resource for a major segment of the young people of Israel for young Jews in France, and an important factor in other communities of the Jewish world,” the ORT leader noted. “Among those in ORT programs last year were some 85,000 youngsters of high school age — the future community leaders, middle-level management, technicians and practical engineers who will be the economic base, the breadwinners for major segments of our people for years to come.”
ORT programs “continue on a growth spiral, Leiwant added, “simply because more Jewish communities, more Jewish parents, see in ORT the keystone to the future of their children and of an entire Jewish generation.”
The American ORT conclave, which is holding its sessions at the Sheraton Centre has been dubbed “the charter conference for ORT’s second hundred years” by Leiwant, who noted that ORT — the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training — was founded in Czarist Russia in 1880.
The delegates to the conference will be called upon to act on a 1981 budget for American ORT’s programs, of which the largest are in Israel, France and Latin America. The budget is expected to be one of the largest in the organization’s history, Leiwant predicted, due to worldwide inflationary pressures, as well as continued growth of ORT services.
LEIWANT: ORT ‘MAGIC’ IS 100% EMPLOYMENT RATE
“We have continuing testimony, to the quality of the education we are providing, “the American ORT leader’s report comments, “in the continuing power of ‘ORT magic’ — the fact that the employment rate for ORT graduates remains at 100 percent worldwide. We have calculated that in the single year following graduation, an ORT student earns as much as ORT’s total investment in his or her education, and that those earnings increase substantially every year thereafter.”
Leiwant cited the growth of ORT programs in Israel in 1980 as an indication of its increasing value there. Nearly 70,000 men, women and young people were in the ORT program in the Jewish state last year, an increase of nearly 5,500 over the year before. The number of ORT schools in Israel increased from 94 to over 100, with new vocational high school in Bat Yam Haifa and Rehovoth.
ANTI-SEMITISM IN FRANCE, LATIN AMERICA
Turning to France, Leiwant reported that despite the increase in anti-Semitism in that country, including the bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris last October, “ORT schools are bursting with students — more than ever, and with many on the waiting lists.” With a French Jewish community now numbering more than 750,000, in part because of continuing immigration from Moslem countries, in 1980 ORT launched what Leiwant termed “an excellent high school” in the Paris suburb of Choisy-le-Roi, most of whose students are North African Jewish youngsters.
“ORT did not escape the increased manifestation of anti-Semitism in some parts of Latin America,” Leiwant’s report noted. “A bomb was thrown into the computer center of the ORT school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. But ORT quickly reaffirmed its commitment to the Jewish community of Argentina — numbering 500,000 people — by immediately repairing the damage to the computer center and reopening it.”
Leiwant said he was “delighted to report that the ORT complex, by far the most sophisticated of its kind south of the Rio Grande, is filled to capacity with students, and functioning with no loss of effective ness.”
He noted the institution during 1980 elsewhere in Latin America, of “ORT tracks” in Jewish schools in Mexico City, in Lima, Peru, and other communities.
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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.
