UN building in New York (archives)
Photo: AP
Haredi woman earns UN internship
Naomi Avraham, 21 from Jerusalem, beats thousands of candidates who applied for prestigious program thanks to her knowledge of four languages: Hebrew, English, Yiddish and Chinese
Naomi Avraham, a 21-year-old ultra-Orthodox woman from Jerusalem who speaks Chinese, Yiddish, English and Hebrew, has been admitted into a prestigious United Nations program open to only a few candidates.
According to Foreign Ministry figures, only 200 people from all around the world are admitted into the internship out of thousands of candidates. The Ministry issued publications calling on Israeli students to apply for the program.
As part of the program, she will serve for two months this summer as an intern as part of the United Nations' budget office at the Department of Field Support (DFS) for peacekeeping missions.
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Naomi Avraham is part of a family of 10 members. She graduated from the Beit Yaakov school for girls, and is about to complete her accounting studies at the haredi branch of Machon Lev – a division of the Jerusalem College of Technology.
Her grandfather, a haredi Jew, lived in China and traded there. "I decided to study Chinese because I think it's at least as important as English," Naomi says.
One of the main reasons for her admission into the UN program is her knowledge of four languages.
Her teachers at Machon Lev are proud of her achievement, and the institute has decided to fund her trip and all expenses involved in the UN internship.
Prof. Herzl Patal, chair of the Accounting & Information Systems Department at Machon Lev, says that "beyond the prestige of the position, it includes priceless added value for the intern and for the State of Israel."
