The financial distress of Argentina’s Jewish school system has led major Jewish organizations convening here to launch a drive to collect $700,000. The system has lost more than 2000 pupils, despite a loan from an Israeli bank and grants from the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency.
According to the JDC’s 1971 annual report, the Jewish school situation “deteriorated” last year and “faced a financial crisis”–largely from the “collapse of the community cooperatives,” which contributed $2 million a year to the system. At the time of the report there were 18,000 pupils in 45 Jewish schools in Argentine, which has 500,000 Jews, 80 percent of them in Buenos Aires.
The organizations meeting here were the Buenos Aires Kehilla, the Argentine Central Council for Jewish Education, the Argentine Zionist Organization and Horim, the association of parents of Jewish-school children. The new funds committee is co-chaired by Naum Katzowicz, Marcos Korenhendler and Miguel Wetstein.
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