Plan for Training Jewish Community Workers at Hebrew U. Announced

Plans which would provide fellowships at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for in-service training of professional Jewish community workers were announced here today. The projection of a World Seminar for Jewish Service, under which American Jewish organizations and institutions can sponsor fellowships for graduate students at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry, was announced at a conference on the America-Israel University Program of the American Friends of the Hebrew University.

Prof. Moshe Davis, head of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the university, said that the fellowship recipients will study with counterparts from Israel and other sections of the Jewish world and will belong to two categories; 1) professionals of American Jewish organizations — or those being considered for employment — who would receive fellowships for in-service training; 2) graduate students who will be working toward a degree, Masters or Doctorate.

The development of the World Seminar for Jewish Service is being assisted by an American advisory committee composed of executives of American Jewish organizations and institutions, Prof. Davis told the conference participants. This program will be designed to emphasize “world Jewish perspectives on Jewish life and institutions, ” he said. He stressed that the curriculum “would have special meaning for young men and women who are devoting themselves to, or are contemplating, American Jewish communal and educational service.”

Major addresses were delivered at the conference by Israel’s Ambassador Avraham Harman, Professor Joshua Prawer former dean of the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Humanities and professor of Medieval History, and Nathaniel L. Goldstein, president of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. Henry Sonneborn, III, co-chairman of the America-Israel University Program, presided.

The nation is experiencing a rising rate of juvenile delinquency but “Jewish children enjoy a low incidence of trouble with the law, ” it was reported here today by James W. Symington, executive director of President Johnson’s committee on juvenile delinquency and youth crime.

Mr. Symington indicated that Jewish families traditionally provided “strength and stability to the family that are beyond the power of the Government to produce artificially. ” He pointed out that the Government was “powerless to transplant family value systems from one community to another.”

Addressing a Government leadership conference, Mr. Symington stressed that “ancestral amenities bind the allegiance” of the Jewish child. He said “the father is the law. At thirteen years of age a boy is reminded in solemn ceremony that he is a man. He does not have to snatch a purse, wield a knife or prove his virility in other objectionable ways.”

But the Government “cannot offer Bar Mitzvah or Christian Confirmation, ” said Mr. Symington. However, he pointed out that the Government could work to strengthen the environment in which every family must live. “It can work for proper housing and sanitation, decent schooling, and fire and police protection. There is a host of services which it is the province of Government to secure, and the right of people to demand. What then happens within each family, and the home that is its castle, is a private matter,” he said.