Hebrew Union College to end Cincinnati rabbinical program after board backs controversial plan

(JTA) – Hebrew Union School will formally cease ordaining rabbis in Cincinnati, the Ohio metropolis the place the Reform seminary was based in 1875.

The seminary’s board of governors voted Monday in New York Metropolis to approve a strategic plan that facilities on enrolling all rabbinical college students at HUC’s campuses in New York and Los Angeles. The Cincinnati rabbinical program will “sundown” in any case at present enrolled college students are ordained by the top of the 2026 educational yr.

The plan was accepted by a greater than two-thirds majority, in keeping with the varsity. Its approval comes after years of declining income and enrollment on the college — and months of bitter debate throughout the Reform neighborhood.

“We acknowledge the ache that this choice causes and count on to take the suitable time and care to implement this choice in a delicate and constructive method, in collaboration with our neighborhood,” HUC President Andrew Rehfeld mentioned in an announcement acknowledging Cincinnati’s renown because the historic middle of American Reform Judaism.

Rehfeld, board chair Sue Neuman Hochberg and chair-elect David Edelson referred to as the choice a “first step” in an electronic mail to the varsity neighborhood despatched greater than two hours after the vote concluded.

“This vote was a primary step towards transformational change for HUC-JIR and the Reform Motion — as we’re sure collectively within the recognition that Judaism should honor its historical past and custom whereas adapting to basic modifications on the planet round us,” they wrote.

HUC says it isn’t closing its Cincinnati campus and can preserve the Klau Library, Skirball Museum and American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati. Within the coming years, in keeping with the plan,  HUC may even create a brand new low-residency rabbinical and cantorial program based mostly on the campus.

The varsity’s small doctoral program, which has been based mostly in Cincinnati, will over the approaching years be supplied at its different campuses, too, Rehfeld informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company final month.

The vote was intently monitored by the broader HUC neighborhood, together with college, employees and alumni serving Reform congregations throughout the US and past. In two open letters that circulated among the many HUC neighborhood within the weeks main as much as the vote, opponents to the plan outnumbered supporters by an element of round three to at least one.

Opponents mentioned they’d view the plan’s passage as an indication the Reform motion was abandoning non-coastal Jews. They contended the plan wouldn’t produce sufficient financial savings to justify its implementation; would discriminate in opposition to college students who’re unable to review in cities with excessive prices of residing; and will probably result in additional closures in Cincinnati.

Opponents made a number of last-ditch efforts to avert the plan’s passage, together with threatening to withhold particular person donations to the varsity in addition to congregational dues to the Reform motion ought to it cross. Ohio’s legal professional normal additionally alerted the varsity that the plan may very well be in violation of its nonprofit settlement, and thus probably warrant an investigation.

No members of the Cincinnati college supported the proposal, and one publicly derided it in a speech in full view of the varsity’s president. About 100 opponents attended a “Rally for our Rabbis” Thursday night in Cincinnati, in keeping with public radio station WVXU, the place Louise Bettman, the great-great granddaughter of HUC’s founder, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Sensible, spoke and instructed that the legal professional normal’s letter may be the group’s final, finest probability to cease the plan.

Some HUC college and alumni supported the plan, which its authors, HUC Provost Rabbi Andrea Weiss and Rabbinical College Director Rabbi Dvora Weisberg, researched by conducting a whole bunch of interviews over a interval of two years. A gaggle of influential Reform rabbis pledged to make up any shortfall in congregational dues incurred due to the board vote.

The plan’s backers mentioned it will assist the varsity reorient itself amid its ongoing monetary and enrollment disaster. Over the previous 15 years, enrollment at HUC’s three American campuses fell by 37%, with the biggest drop, 60%, coming in Cincinnati. In the meantime, the Reform motion has seen dues from congregations fall by two thirds over the identical interval, lowering the motion’s capacity to pad the seminary’s stretched finances.