HUC was founded in Cincinnati in 1875 under the leadership of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.[2]Jacob Ezekiel was Secretary of the Board, registrar, and treasurer from the College's inception until just before his death in 1899. The first rabbinical class graduated in 1883.[3] The graduation banquet for this class became known as the Trefa Banquet because it included food that was not kosher, such as clams, soft-shell crabs, shrimp, frogs' legs and dairy products served immediately after meat. At the time, Reform rabbis were split over the question of whether the Jewish dietary restrictions were still applicable. Some of the more traditionalist Reform rabbis thought the banquet menu went too far, and were compelled to find an alternative between Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism. This was a major cause of the founding of American Conservative Judaism.[3]
In 1950, a second HUC campus was created in New York through a merger with the rival Reform Jewish Institute of Religion. Additional campuses were added in Los Angeles in 1954, and in Jerusalem in 1963.[4]
As of 2009, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is an international seminary and university of graduate studies offering a wide variety of academic and professional programs. In addition to its Rabbinical School, the College-Institute includes Schools of Graduate Studies, Education, Jewish Non-Profit Management, sacred music, Biblical archaeology and an Israeli rabbinical program.[5]
The Los Angeles campus operates many of its programs and degrees in cooperation with the neighboring University of Southern California, a partnership that has lasted over 35 years.[6] Their productive relationship includes the creation of the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, an interfaith think tank through the partnership of HUC, USC and Omar Foundation. CMJE[7] holds religious text-study programs across Los Angeles. Ironically, no classrooms on this campus have windows.[citation needed]
Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk was appointed as HUC's sixth president, following the death of Nelson Glueck. As president, Gottschalk oversaw the growth and expansion of the HUC campuses, the ordination of Sally Priesand as the first female rabbi in the United States, the investiture of Reform Judaism's first female hazzan and the ordination of Naamah Kelman as the first female rabbi to be ordained in Israel.[8]
In 1996, Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman was appointed as the 7th President of the College-Institute. He was succeeded in 2000 by Rabbi David Ellenson as the 8th President. The 9th president of HUC-JIR, elected in 2014, was Rabbi Aaron D. Panken, Ph.D. A noted authority on rabbinic and Second Temple literature, with research interests in the historical development of legal concepts and terms, Rabbi Panken was killed in a plane crash on May 5, 2018, while piloting a single-engine Aeronca 7AC over New York's Hudson Valley.[9][10]
Doctor Andrew Rehfeld was elected the 10th president on December 18, 2018, and inaugurated at Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati on October 27, 2019.[11]
The Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music
The cantorial school of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion was founded in 1947. The school is located on the New York campus of HUC-JIR at One West Fourth Street. It offers a five-year graduate program, conferring the degree of Master of Sacred Music in the fourth year and ordination as cantor in the fifth year.
Cantorial School at HUC-JIR begins in Jerusalem and continues for the next four years in New York. While in Israel, students study Hebrew, and Jewish music, and get to know Israel. Cantorial students study alongside Rabbinical and Education students. In New York, the program includes professional learning opportunities as a student-cantor, in which students serve congregations within and outside of the NY area.
The curriculum includes liturgical music classes covering traditional Shabbat, High Holiday and Festival nusach, Chorus, Musicology, Reform Liturgy and Composition; Judaica and text classes such as Bible, Midrash and History; and professional development. Each student is assigned practica (mini-recitals) during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of school culminating with a Senior Recital (based on a thesis) during the 5th year.
Rabbi David Ellenson, then president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, announced on January 27, 2011, that the School of Sacred Music would be renamed the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in honor of Debbie Friedman. The renaming officially occurred on December 7, 2011.[12][13]
Gender equality
HUC has both male and female students in all its programs, including rabbinic and cantorial studies. Since its founding, the College-Institute has ordained over 2,800 rabbis and over 400 cantors. As of 2007, 520 ordained rabbis and 179 invested cantors have been women.[14] (SeeWomen and the rabbinical credential). The first female rabbi to be ordained by HUC was Sally Priesand, ordained in 1972, the only woman in a class with 35 men.[15] The first female cantor to be invested by HUC was Barbara Ostfeld in 1975.[16]
After four years of deliberation, HUC decided to give women a choice of wording on their ordination certificates beginning in 2016, including the option to have the same wording as men.[17] Up until then, male candidates' certificates identified them by the Reform movement's traditional "morenu harav," or "our teacher the rabbi," while female candidates' certificates only used the term "rav u’morah," or "rabbi and teacher." Sally Priesand herself was unaware that her certificate referred to her any differently than her male colleagues until it was brought to her attention years later. Rabbi Mary Zamore, executive director of the Reform movement's Women's Rabbinic Network, explained that the HUC was uncomfortable with giving women the same title as men. In 2012 she wrote to Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC's then president, requesting that he address the discrepancy, which she said was "smacking of gender inequality."[17]
In 2021, following new reports about sexual abuse by former HUC president Sheldon Zimmerman and recently-deceased professor Michael Cook, three separate Reform organizations began internal investigations of sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination.[18] HUC retained the law firm Morgan Lewis, who conducted 170 interviews addressing incidents beginning in the 1970s. The report described the culture at the school's campuses as a "good old boys" mindset demonstrating favoritism towards cisgender men, particularly at the Cincinnati and Jerusalem campuses. It found that students and administration were reluctant to confront professors over repeated incidents of harassment and discrimination, as many of the perpetrators are or were revered scholars in their field, and complaints were often swept under the rug. Former professors Steven M. Cohen, Michael Cook, and Stephen Passamaneck, Director of Litiurgical Arts and Music Bonia Shur, and former presidents Alfred Gottschalk and Sheldon Zimmerman were reported to be the subject of repeated credible allegations of sexual harassment. The report recommended renaming or removing endowed chairs, scholarships, statues, and buildings that honor the wrongdoers. The school's current president and board both stated that they would make teshuvah (repent), work to prevent such incidents, and revise policies for handling misconduct complaints.[19]
Resources
The HUC library system contains one of the most extensive Jewish collections in the world. Each campus has its own library:
Klau Library in Cincinnati, the main research library. This library is the second-largest collection of printed Jewish material in the world (the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem is the first). The library states it has 700,000 volumes, including 150 incunabula and over 2,000 manuscriptcodices.[20]
Klau Library in New York—130,000 volumes.
S. Zalman and Ayala Abramov Library in Jerusalem—100,000 volumes.
Frances-Henry Library in Los Angeles—100,000 volumes.
The three U.S. campuses share a catalog, but the Jerusalem collection is separately cataloged.
Museum
The Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York presents exhibitions highlighting Jewish history, culture, and contemporary creativity.[21]
Since its founding in 1983 as the Joseph Gallery, the HUC-JIR Museum has grown physically to encompass 5,000 square feet (460m2) of exhibition space, expanding to include the Petrie Great Hall, Klingenstein Gallery, Heller Gallery and Backman Gallery.[citation needed]
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion also manages the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and Skirball Museum in Jerusalem.[citation needed]
Elliot Kukla, came out as transgender six months before his ordination in 2006, and was the first openly transgender person to be ordained by HUC-JIR[29]
Sally Priesand, America's first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history, after Regina Jonas[31][32]
The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Jewish Theological Seminary Library is one of the most significant collections of Judaica in the world.
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish musician or precentor trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer. In English, this prayer leader is often referred to as a cantor, a term also used in Christianity.
Sally Jane Priesand is America's first female rabbi ordained by a rabbinical seminary, and the second formally ordained female rabbi in Jewish history, after Regina Jonas. Priesand was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion on June 3, 1972, at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati. After her ordination she served first as assistant and then as associate rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, and later led Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey from 1981 until her retirement in 2006. She is featured in numerous books including Rabbis: The Many Faces of Judaism and Fifty Jewish Women who Changed the World.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
David Ellenson is an American rabbi and academic who is known as a leader of the Reform movement in Judaism. Ellenson is currently Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and Visiting Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and interim President of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). He previously served as president of HUC-JIR from 2001 to December 31, 2013, and is now Chancellor Emeritus of that college. Ellenson is currently serving as interim President following the death of his successor, Aaron D. Panken.
Rachel Adler is professor of Modern Jewish Thought and Judaism and Gender at Hebrew Union College, at the Los Angeles campus.
Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman is a former rabbinic leader in Reform Judaism. He is a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. In 2000, Zimmerman was suspended from the CCAR after an inquiry regarding inappropriate sexual conduct revealed a pattern of predatory behavior, including fondling and kissing a teenager. He subsequently resigned as the 7th president of HUC-JIR which he had led from 1996–2000.
Women rabbis are individual Jewish women who have studied Jewish Law and received rabbinical ordination. Women rabbis are prominent in Progressive Jewish denominations, however, the subject of women rabbis in Orthodox Judaism is more complex. Although Orthodox women have been ordained as rabbis, many major Orthodox Jewish communities and institutions do not accept the change. In an alternative approach, other Orthodox Jewish institutions train women as Torah scholars for related Jewish religious roles. These roles typically involve training women as religious authorities in Jewish Law but without formal rabbinic ordination, instead, alternate titles are used. Yet, despite this alteration in title, these women are often perceived as equivalent to ordained rabbis. Since the 1970s, over 1,200 Jewish women have been ordained as rabbis.
The first openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender clergy in Judaism were ordained as rabbis and/or cantors in the second half of the 20th century.
Alfred Gottschalk was a German-born American Rabbi who was a leader in the Reform Judaism movement, serving as head of the movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) for 30 years, as president from 1971 to 1996, and then as chancellor until 2000. In that role, Rabbi Gottschalk oversaw the ordination of the first women to be ordained as rabbis in the United States and Israel, and he oversaw the development of new HUC campuses in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York City, three of the school's four campuses.
Naamah Kelman-Ezrachi is an American-born Rabbi who was named as Dean of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion campus in Jerusalem starting in July 2009. In 1992, Kelman made history as the first woman in Israel to become a rabbi when she received her rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk.
The cantor in the Reform movement is a clergy member who fills a diverse role within the Jewish community. Cantors lead worship, officiate at lifecycle events, teach adults and children, run synagogue music programs, and offer pastoral care. Cantors typically serve along with other clergy members, usually rabbis and occasionally additional cantors, in partnership to lead synagogue communities. The Reform cantor is a professional office with a prescribed educational path and professional organization. Cantors are "invested", a term borrowed from the idea of priestly vestments, at the conclusion of study. "Investiture" confers the status of clergy to cantors, just as "ordination" does for rabbis.
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi is The Effie Wise Ochs Professor of Biblical Literature and History at the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.
This is a timeline of women rabbis in the United States.
Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus is an American rabbi. She is a founder and former president of the Women's Rabbinic Network, which was founded in 1976 by fifteen female rabbinical students. She was ordained in 1979 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, and is to her knowledge the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi while pregnant. In 1983 she moved back to Illinois, becoming the first female rabbi in that state. In 2001 she became the first female president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. In 2004 HUC-JIR awarded her an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. In 2009 she was installed as the second female president of Reform Judaism's Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) in Jerusalem, making her the first female leader of a major rabbinic organization to begin her tenure in Israel. In 2009 she was also inducted onto the Board of Governors of HUC-JIR. In 2010 she was selected as one of the top 50 rabbis in America by Newsweek and the Sisterhood blog of The Jewish Daily Forward. In 2011 she received the Rabbi Mordecai Simon Memorial Award. The piece "From Generation to Generation: A Roundtable Discussion with Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus", appears in the book The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate, published in 2016. She is married and has three children. Her father-in-law is the late Rabbi A. Stanley Dreyfus, also a Reform Rabbi.
Peninsula Temple Sholom (PTS) is a Reform Jewish Congregation in Burlingame, California. It was founded in 1955, and since then, has constantly grown its congregation and has expanded its facilities to include a social hall, a Religious School and a Preschool. For five decades, its services were led by Rabbi Gerald Raiskin, who changed the legacy and history of the temple until his passing in 2006. Throughout the years, PTS clergy and lay leaders have continued to lead services for hundreds of reform Jews in the Bay Area and is an influential place for them to find community and practice Reform Judaism.
This is a timeline of women rabbis.
Aaron D. Panken was an American Reform rabbi and academic administrator. He served as the 12th president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
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