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FEATURES
     The ultimate gift
     Torah and technology
VALLEY
     Day-school aid among year's top budget priorities
     JFCS receives national award
     Principal hired for Chabad high school
NATION
     Reform rabbis field tough issues at gathering
     U.N. nominee Holbrooke says wife is his 'Jewish story'
     Israeli TV ready for prime time in U.S.
WORLD
     China synagogue has been restored
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     Jerusalem expansion plan draws flak
     First-ever vote on redeployment mulled
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     Editorial - Come and eat
     Analysis - Iran-friendly U.S. policy worries Israel supporters
     In the mail - Letters to the Editor
ARTS
     A musical preview: "The Prince of Egypt"
BUSINESS
     Nominations sought for arts' volunteer awards
SPEAKING VOLUMES
     New novels provide summer 'escapes'
TORAH STUDY
     Rebel understood holiness
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Torah and technology

'Ethiopians for Engineers' aiming to put immigrants
on Israel's high-tech track

GAIL LICHTMAN
World Zionist Press Service
Participants in the Ethiopians for Engineers program
Participants in the Ethiopians for Engineers program at the Jerusalem College of Technology receive an introduction to electronics from program director David Cassel-Twersky, who is half Ethiopian himself. The program is designed to encourage high-tech studies among Israel's Ethiopian immigrants, the majority of whom traditionally shy away from technological fields in favor of social sciences.
The Ethiopian community in Israel has made great strides in the seven years since Operation Solomon, when 14,500 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in a dramatic 36-hour rescue operation. Almost 100 percent of young Ethiopian men serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 10 percent of whom are officers, and Ethiopian students can be found in all of Israel's institutes of higher education.

But in one critical area - science and technology - Ethiopians have not made significant inroads. With Israel's hopes for the future pinned on high tech, this is a serious drawback.

In order to help correct this situation, the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) has instituted a special program called Ethiopians for Engineers, designed to promote science and technology studies in the Ethiopian community.

JCT is a Jerusalem-based men's college that combines Torah studies and four-year degree programs in science and technology. It is a small school (730 students) but one that is having a relatively large impact. The college has the highest percentage of students who receive IDF deferments to study at any institution of higher education in Israel. It also has the highest percentage of new immigrant students. The quarter-million-dollar Ethiopians for Engineers program is the most ambitious program of its kind to be undertaken to date by any of Israel's colleges or universities for the Ethiopian community in the field of science and technology.

Twenty Ethiopian students, 18 to 23 years old, were selected out of more than 100 applicants. All are graduates of religious Israeli high schools. The bulk are pre-army induction and the program operates in cooperation with the IDF, which is anxious to benefit from more technologically advanced manpower.

The students are given full scholarships, plus a special one-year preparatory program designed to bring up their level of readiness and ease them into full studies at JCT.

"JCT is a place of values," says the college's president, Prof. Joseph Bodenheimer. "When there is a problem facing Israel, we want to be part of the solution.

"We noticed that Ethiopians were not integrating into

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