A NEW YEAR'S CARD FROM ISRAEL

Heat. Heat. May you be inscribed for a good year. In Israel, the hopes for this new year and all new years are what they have always been. Justice, prosperity, and peace. A new and happy year can start at any time, at any place. Perhaps here at a printing press of the Brandeise Vocational Training Center. In Israel, vocational training spells opportunity for the individual, but also the future of the nation. [Music] Vocational training is a decisive step toward integration, toward helping people of many cultures to become one people. A basic step in Israel's effort to industrialize the country. [Music] These are the senus and muscles of Israel as it nears the age of 20. Modern machinery and installations have replaced outmoded factories. Many new factories have been built. But as the need for greater production increases, more and more skilled hands are needed. [Music] Once the frontier was the land itself. The new frontier which challenges Israel is industrialization. Once the password was a brea no other choice in defense of Israel's borders. Today it is a breer again no other choice but to industrialize and in a hurry. [Music] Israel must produce what she needs. She must export. She must trade. [Music] Across these docks pass millions of tons of cargo, exports ranging from diamonds to cars, from furniture to fertilizers, from raincoats to oranges. [Music] But between what Israel exports and what Israel imports, there is a gap of some $450 million. Closing that gap depends this year and in the years to come on the productive skills of people, individual people. The job of guiding people, individual people into productive work for which they are best suited may well begin on any day at the Hadasa Vocational Guidance Institute in Jerusalem. As long ago as 1944, the institute, the first of its kind in Israel, began the vital job of helping people choose their work. More than 60,000 people have been counseledled. More than one out of every 50 people in Israel. Mr. Sardi is the director of the institute. Our institute is rather unique for Israel because it's the only one which offers an integrated comprehensive service for a wide range of clientele adolescents as well as adults. We try to give answers to individual needs as well to societal needs. We offer counseling for the individual and for groups and we do research, occupational information and instruction. Tests are often part of the process of vocational guidance. Tests to determine dexterity and manual skills. tests under careful concerned supervision to help in the scientific job of helping all kinds of people discover which kind of job or job training they are suited for. [Music] Most of the tests are developed by the institute's own research unit. They provide valuable clues for vocational guidance. A test is an objective tool to assess capacities and interests of the individual. They're only one tool in the counseling process. Counseling is needed by many kinds of people at many stages of life. Through skillful counseling, guidance, testing, and research, doorways to the future are opened. personal and national futures of productivity and self-fululfillment. [Music] The institute designs and administers tests in which young people qualify for courses of study or training. This room is crowded with ambition. The right responses will lead this boy to study and eventual work as a telephone line repairman. The right responses may qualify this girl for study at the Henrieta Zold School of Nursing and a life of service as the healing hands of Hadasa. The right responses will qualify this girl for courses that will make her one of those charming and efficient ground hostesses who enchant arriving travelers at Lea airport. [Music] Thousands of careers have been launched in this room. Careers important to each young man and woman. Careers vitally important to Israel's present and future. The institute examines candidates for study in occupations as diverse as the young people themselves. This young man is an Arab. His home is this village in the so-called Arab Triangle where life has not changed much in the last decades. But in the enormously complex job of integration, the Arab population is certainly not forgotten. Some Arab youngsters from this village have found the paths to change and fellowship in the pleasant surroundings of Hadasa's rural vocational center, Hadasa Neorim, operated in partnership with Youth Aliyah. [Music] Neorim means youth. Not Jewish youth, not Arab youth, just youth. And for all youth, a new life and a new year can begin on any day in Naim. [Music] There are more than a thousand students at Naoreim. Children of every background and of many cultures, of whom more than 400 live in the cent's dormitories. [Applause] Another 500 students come to Naodim only one day a week to learn basic academic skills, reading, writing, arithmetic. [Music] These are youngsters who are already working, who have not had the opportunity to go to school or have dropped out of school for economic reasons. [Music] For full-time students at Hadasa Naoreim, the range of vocational training is staggering. Some courses appear simple but the right training is the training which is right for the individual boy or girl for the youth aliya wards and the underprivileged youngsters from surrounding immigrant settlements. Narim teaches skills basic to self-respect [Music] training which is geared to the actual needs of each child's life as well as to the actual needs of the country. future welders for shipyards in Hifa and Ashto for factories rising in Ako and Deona. Future specialists in agro mechanics for a country rapidly expanding its agriculture. Uncertain youngsters of today. Tomorrow, the dependable farmers of the Negv and the Galil. Future kindergarten teachers for a country expanding its preschool programs in its own operation Head Start. Girls who are teachers in training today, preparing to guide tomorrow's generation of newly settled areas. [Music] future architectural draftsmen for a country caught in a fever of building construction. [Music] Today, girls drawing practice blueprints and plans. Tomorrow, women making an essential contribution to the building of a nation. All of Meim's courses are geared to Israel's changing needs. Studies in electronics prepare these youngsters for an emerging television industry, for military communications needs, and for the eventual automation of industry. In a country on the move, skills learned at Hadasa Neorim will have their impact from Matula to Elat. Skills learned here are helping to change the face of Israel. teaching Israel's citizens also to ask not what their country can do for them, but to ask what they each one can do for their country this year and in the years to come. For some, a new year and a new life begins literally any day. The population growth is 5% a year, one of the highest in the world. [Applause] [Music] A population explosion in the maternity wards and on the streets of thriving Israel. [Music] In a few but exciting years, hundreds of thousands of newcomers have streamed into Israel from every continent. In this hoped for, encouraged, sought after immigration, the population has increased almost five-fold since 1948. to feed, to clothe, to house this enormous influx of immigrants has placed a tremendous pressure on the economy. [Music] In Jerusalem, as in other parts of the country, this pressure is not always visible to the casual eye. Despite great progress, poverty and the economic struggle are a daily fact of life for many immigrants who have come unskilled from deprived and backward environments. An important key to achieving integration and to breaking the cycle of poverty is vocational training. Placing the problem into context is the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Cole. last few years uh the country is becoming more and more aware of the importance of occasional uh training and uh we are putting more and more stress on it all over the country and in Jerusalem as well. It is of course uh the quickest way of helping uh people particularly children from new immigrants uh to raise their level of earning and uh achieve a position in the country. And while this in itself is not uh the only thing in order to enable them to integrate without a higher standard of living certainly nobody could think of any integration helping the children of new immigrants reach a certain standard of living and helping them integrate into the mainstream of the country's life is the task of Hadasa's Alice Elsixburg Vocational High School in Jerusalem. [Music] Since the school's establishment in 1942, the effort has been to make vocational training an acceptable concept for girls of many origins, a means of bringing them constructively into the larger society of growing Israel. Though there has always been a grand design in Hadas's vocational training program, the patterns of vocational training have changed constantly and are changing still. [Music] Once simple sewing for dress making sufficed. Today the sophisticated oat couture of Israel competes with the fashion industry of the world. The blending of east and west in these creations is matched by the blending of the cultures of the students at the Selixburg school. The diversity of the students is reflected in the school's curriculum in vocational as well as academic subjects. To make schooling a meaningful and effective experience for all kinds of children, a new educational approach is being taken and Hadasa has been asked again to lead the way. A well-rounded education is being expanded to broaden the horizons of each student according to her interests and capabilities. For some that means basic skills. For others enough academic preparation for post-graduate studies. For the most gifted the possibility of eventual studies at a university. [Music] It is a delicate and exquisite effort of bringing together the needs of a growing society and the needs of growing individuals. [Music] Out of experience, sensitivity, concern for human beings, Hadasa has found a way to draw these threads together to enrich the lives of young people and to strengthen the social and economic life of Israel. [Music] A new and precious pattern of education is emerging in Israel's educational system out of Hadas's experience and effort of a quarter of a century. As commerce and industry grow, clerical and secretarial needs grow. Selixburg is helping to meet the shortage, which is particularly acute in Jerusalem, where most government offices are concentrated. [Applause] Jerusalem and uh the municipality are particularly happy uh about the Selixburg school uh because uh of a variety of reasons. Not only that they produce uh good uh fashion experts and good cooks and uh girls who are excellent in crafts. all fields we are interested in developing. But besides that, we have a very personal reason. Whenever the city fathers want to have a real quiet meal and talk things over, we order ourselves a room at Selixburg. It's the nicest surroundings, the prettiest waitresses, very good food. We enjoy it greatly. And we are not the only ones who do that. Providing a pleasant environment for the city fathers of Jerusalem is a perfectly acceptable aim. But the courses in food and dietetics go far beyond that. They are a training ground for one of Israel's most important industries, tourism. [Music] Tourism is not only an important source of foreign currency, it is a means of forging closer bonds with Jews throughout the world. The newly constructed hotels attract more and more visitors each season. Among them, many who come to Israel through Hadas's expanding tourists program. [Music] They can enjoy the most modern comforts and continental traditions under Israel's sunny skies. [Music] What tourists see today in Israel is an incredible progress and growth based on the creativity and talent of a determined people. A progress which finds its roots in the past and its inspiration in the future. 15 years ago the word was sa austerity. Today the profusion of consumer goods is impressively demonstrated in Israel's major cities. But new and different problems are being encountered. The first signs of unemployment are being felt. It is an unemployment of the unskilled and the untrained. [Music] At the Brandeise Vocational Training Center in Jerusalem, established in 1944, Hadasa is playing a key role in setting standards for education in pivotal skills. Today of course uh everybody knows about the importance of occasional training for the country as a whole and we know about it for Jerusalem particularly but uh when the Brandise school was started a little over 20 years ago it was really a pioneering effort in fields which are of the greatest importance to Jerusalem because these fields of fine mechanics of tools and dice and particularly of printing are the ones that we want to develop uh in Jerusalem and are developing in Jerusalem. to give it a broader economic base. Today there are 230 students at Brandeise in the fine mechanics and instrument school. The course is four years and includes academic as well as vocational studies. These are tools which make tools, machines which make machines to populate the assembly lines which in turn produce the goods that Israel needs. One of the latest additions at Brand Eyes is a tool and die making department, the first in Israel. A dye is the master for a product, a mold more or less, from which products or parts of products are made. [Music] The measurements are made in 10,000 of an inch. And this workpiece is being made to order for Israel's factories. [Music] The fine mechanics division of Brandise is operated as if it were a commercial enterprise. Dr. Schneider, head of the division, explains why we believe here that students can be trained to meet the standards and requirements of industry more rapidly and efficiently by being given actual production work rather than by being exercised on pieces of metal which they know have no actual use. As students learn, they provide the tools for learning for others. They create precisely the instruments needed to aid Israel scientists in their endless search for ways to better the life of man. These instruments will be used not only by the Hadasa medical organization, but by scores of scientists and researchers working to make each new year a happy new year of progress and peace for Israel. There is no way to measure the value of a scientist's search to eradicate the ills and diseases which afflict mankind. No way to measure the value of tools which extend the life of men. As it has turned out, we have become the only suppliers in Israel of such highly precise instruments as microscopes and a great variety of other scientific apparatus. The contribution of our school is therefore twofold. We are offering the best training there is in Israel and we are producing actually producing uh a great many scientific instruments which otherwise would have to be ordered from abroad. The product is not only apparatus. The product is not only skills. The product is a vital contribution to a nation and to Israel's place in the world. There are three keys to the success of Hadasa's vocational training program. The quality and dedication of its teachers who express in modern terms the age-old Jewish emphasis on learning. the care with which each students individual needs are met and the sensitivity with which training is geared to Israel's changing needs. This new year and all the years to come rest in the hands of Israel's youth. in the hands also of those who assist the youth of Israel toward a future of brotherhood, prosperity, and peace.