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THE RIGHT HONORABLE VIS
COUNTESS ERLEIGH
. . . first and foremost . . . their children.
O NE of the most striking features to be ob
served in the Jewish settlements in Palestine
is the extraordinary care lavished upon the
children. In a land swarming with thousands of
unkempt and ragged children growing up in com
plete ignorance, it is a great contrast to come upon
the Jewish children to whose bodily and mental
welfare the most modern rules of hygiene and
pedagogy are being applied. On the one hand,
the children of the desert, on the other children
of the most modern upbringing.
The Jewish pioneers came to Palestine not mere
ly for the sake of greater political and material
security, but first and foremost in the hope that
their contact with the mother soil, and of their
children born on this soil, should release new crea
tive forces. For this reason they aim at develop
ing faculties in the children likely to bring about
this result.
In every single settlement, be it in town or
country, the same loving care is bestowed on the
children. It sets in at the hour of birth through
the provision of infant welfare centers, where the
mother is instructed how best to look after her
child. Flic task of these welfare centers is not
an easy one. The young Jewish mother hailing
from Europe is ready and anxious to profit by the
instructions, no trouble is too great for her to take
for her children, but there are a number of poor
Oriental families in the cities from Yemen, Persia
and Morocco, who have adopted the customs of
their Arab neighbors. These mothers have to
learn before they can feed a baby properly, and
instead of having recourse to a doctor in case of
illness, they put an amulet around the child’s neck
or dose it with strong black coffee. The presence
and work of a Jewish nurse, trained in the Nurses’
Training School, however, in one of these poor
quarters quickly induces these untaught women to
bring their children and be guided by her counsel
for they are, after all, Jewish and anxious to do
the best for their children. In the consulting room
of such a nurse all the various types of such an
Oriental quarter will be found, from the dark
Yemenite woman with her exquisitely moulded
features, to the Persian woman in wide baggy
trousers, the Bucharian woman wearing colorful
head-ornaments of Batik, the Moroccan woman
with tinkling silver ear and nose rings. Each
one of them carries one or more babies to be
weighed, and careful attention is given to the in
structions regarding feeding and treatment.
This work is done by the American Jewish
Women’s Organization, and is assisted by the
World Zionist Organization. Within the past
ten years an amount of approximately $1,700,000
The Jews
The Southern Israelite pre
sents this exclusive article
by the daughter of the late
Lord Melchett, who now has
a home in Tel Mond, Pales
tine. After a thorough study
of conditions in the Jewish
Homeland. Viscountess Er
leigh gives us a comprehen
sive bird's eye view of the
methods of raising Jewish
children in Palestine.— Tilli
EDITOR.
of Tomorro
Raising Children on the
Rim of the Wilderness
By The Right Honorable Viscountess Erleigh
has been expended on health and sanitation in the
Jewish settlements, of which a large share was
allotted to infant welfare and the care of the school
child. These efforts have succeeded in re
ducing infant mortality among Palestinian Jews,
which in the year 1923 still amounted to 125 per
cent per thousand births, to 69 per cent in 1930,
or 100.55 per cent less than among the local Arabs,
even though they, too, have learned already a
good deal from the Jews. England’s tigures were
74 per cent in 1929 and 60 per cent in 1930.
The next stage in the carefully planned educa
tional system of the Palestinian child is its entiy
into the kindergarten. In Palestine there is so
strong a sense of collective responsibility that the
Jewish Agency appropriates certain amounts from
its budget for this pur
pose, but the people
themselves maintain
them to a large degree.
In these kindergartens
the Hebrew language
forces the link which
unites the many diver
sified elements into one
whole.
A glance into a Je
rusalem kindergarten
provides an amazingly
diversified picture. Next
to the child of Russian
parentage of an appar
ently Slavonic type
there is a fair-haired
mite from Poland; a
dark-brown fragile and
slim Yemenite child
rubs shoulders with a sturdy, strong-boned and
broad-faced Bucharian offspring. And the totally
different types and costumes of the ehildren cor
respond to the multiplicity of their language. It
is said that an inquiry made in one of the Jerusa
lem kindergartens elicited the information that
fifteen different languages were spoken in the
homes of the children. 1 he moment, however,
the kindeigaiten teacher enters the classroom,
these differences vanish. She intones but a note
and the whole class breaks into a Hebrew song.
It forms into a group which moves according to
repeated rhythmic Hebrew words of command.
1 he teacher sa\ s the first line of a Hebrew verse
and the children themselves supply the rhymed
second line. In the kindergartens of Palestine
new words which enrich the revived Hebrew lan-
guage are being coined daily. The handiwork of
the children in the kindergartens shows a high de-
giee ot originality, and is of a very high standard.
The ingenuity of the teachers in providing mate
rial is a source of wonder to those used only to the
highly equipped kindergartens of Europe and
America.
This preparation enables the children to enter
the elementary school at 6 or 7 years of age. On
this educational system, extending from the kin
dergarten and elementary school to secondary
schools and gymnasia and teachers’ seminaries, the
Hebrew University and workers’ extension course',
the Zionist Organization has spent -£870,000 dur
ing the past ten years. This expenditure has not
served merely to provide elementary and higher
education for eighteen thousand boys and girls;
it has at the same time
thrown a bridge over
the gap dividing the
present day Jewish chil
dren from their ances
tors, who gave us the
Bible. 'I'he Jewish child
in Palestine is constant
ly reminded of the glo
rious past. Mount Car
mel, trodden by the
feet of the Prophet
Eli] a h, Absoloni >
Tomb in the Kidron
Valiev, the Western
Wall of the Temple,
known as the W ailing
Wall, Herod’s Spring,
the ruins of Armaged
don—all these form a
living link with the
past. The Hebrew language, moreover, is a et
ter medium than any other for penetrating eep)
into the spirit of Jewish ethics and religion.
The strongest impression of the unexamp
love devoted to the child, and of the deep a
in its spiritual development, is furnisher ) ^
agricultural settlements of Palestine. - °*
the settlers have behind them years ot want, \ e
gle and illness on the soil which their han s ^
drained and freed from pestilential te'ers. _
many places they still live in tents and a ^ ^
with none but the barest necessities ot 1 e ,‘ enlcnts
more amazing then to find in these * et ...
well fed, well clothed and well cared to. <
in every sense of the woid. Amu.' lc
barracks of the parents, there is a l U n( j QV>
structure with a wire netting outside t . ot
to keep out the mosquitoes, but allov lf |^P n j ce jy
sun and air to come in. In the * ^ jq)
furnished rooms or on (Please turn
—Courtesy National Keereauon Association
AT THE JERUSALEM PLAYGROUND
. . . bridge over the gap dividing children from their
ancestors.
¥ THE SOUTHERN
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