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The Reform movement’s seminary system has been plagued by an “old boys’ club” mentality that allowed sexual harassment, racism and discrimination against LGBTQ students to fester for decades, according an investigation released Tuesday by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. The two presidents who led the school from 1971 until 2000 were both implicated in…
Lex Rofeberg was a junior in college and thinking about becoming a rabbi when he hit a roadblock: he was dating a non-Jew. A representative from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s seminary, visited Brown University to talk to prospective students, and was questioned by a fellow student about a policy Rofeberg…
A recent Forward article asked a provocative and troubling question: “Where Are All the Non-Orthodox Rabbis?” It pointed to a steep decline in enrollment at non-Orthodox rabbinical schools, which should prompt some new thinking. Here’s a start: Why not merge the Reform and Conservative seminaries? Last year, the non-Orthodox rabbinical schools admitted fewer than 100…
Europe’s first state-run Jewish divinity program, the School for Jewish Theology, has opened at the University of Potsdam outside Berlin. The program, which was opened on Monday, is being called a groundbreaking development in the German university system, which up to now has only subsidized Catholic and Protestant theological training programs. Recently Islamic programs also…
The Conservative movement will open a seminary in Germany near Berlin. The Zacharias Frankel European Campus of the American Jewish University’s Ziegler Rabbinical School in Los Angeles is scheduled to launch next fall at the University of Potsdam. The seminary outside Berlin is believed to be the first Conservative seminary in Europe and will start…
Rabbi Aaron Panken was elected president of The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion by its board of governors. HUC, the international university and seminary for Reform Judaism, made the announcement on Wednesday. Panken, 49, of Mamaroneck, N.Y., has taught rabbinic and Second Temple literature at HUC-JIR in New York since 1995. He has served…
Should the Reform movement ordain intermarried rabbis? Hebrew Union College, which is the seminary of America’s largest Jewish denomination, is considering altering its current policy, which does not allow admission to its rabbinical, cantorial or education schools of applicants who are married to or partnered with non-Jews. A growing chorus of voices — including newly-ordained…
Last fall, Jessica Minnen, a rabbinical student at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary, was on her way to officiate at a wedding in Brooklyn. What started out as an ordinary ride on the A train turned into a spiritual revelation about the 21st-century rabbinate. Minnen was quietly reviewing a course catalog for a new…
