Hebrew Union Faculty opens new digital rabbinical program

At Hebrew Union Faculty–Jewish Institute of Faith, rabbinical college students usually pray collectively and follow main providers as part of their research. They pore over Jewish texts in teams of two, a follow known as chevruta, and in programs for as much as 5 years.

However for a cohort of scholars beginning in January, rabbinical faculty goes to look just a little totally different. They’ll nonetheless take part in those self same actions, however as an alternative of gathering in individual, they’ll meet on-line.

Faculty leaders hope the digital choice, which launched this month with a cohort of 10, will attain a brand new group of scholars and supply a lift to its backside line. HUC-JIR,a Jewish graduate schooling establishment for Judaism’s Reform motion, has confronted enrollment and monetary troubles lately, resulting in controversial cuts to its in-person packages and different belt-tightening measures. The brand new pathway comes at a time when liberal rabbinical colleges are struggling to draw and prepare sufficient would-be rabbis and on-line rabbinical packages are rising extra prevalent.

HUC-JIR presently has about 132 rabbinical college students throughout its campuses in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York and its quickly to be shuttered rabbinical program in Cincinnati, slated to shut after the 2025–26 tutorial 12 months. During the last 15 years, rabbinical pupil enrollment plummeted by 37 p.c, in response to school knowledge. Over all, 240 college students had been enrolled this fall, down from 250 final fall and 293 the 12 months earlier than that, in response to the HUC-JIR Workplace of Evaluation, Institutional Analysis, and Compliance.

Andrew Rehfeld, president of HUC-JIR, mentioned the digital pathway goals to serve aspiring rabbis at a time when individuals are more and more used to studying and dealing on-line. He hopes this system will draw college students dwelling in areas with out HUC-JIR campuses who can’t transfer due to household or different tasks and folks thinking about turning into rabbis as a second profession.

“We have to be conscious of a contemporary world … a world that appears totally different than it did even 5 or 10 or 20 years in the past,” Rehfeld mentioned. In any other case, “we gained’t have the ability to retain the position that we’ve of delivering Jewish leaders for the complete Jewish world … This permits us to lift up rabbis and new management for all of North America, regardless of the place we occur to have campuses.”

Rehfeld mentioned HUC-JIR isn’t distinctive in its challenges as enrollment drops at liberal rabbinical colleges and different spiritual establishments that prepare clergy. The Jewish Theological Seminary, an mental hub of the Conservative motion, reported that in 2007, 5 outstanding liberal rabbinical colleges within the U.S., together with JTS, collectively enrolled 100 incoming rabbinical college students; by 2022, that quantity plummeted to simply 52. Rehfeld mentioned enrollment challenges proceed, however he’s hopeful HUC-JIR can buck developments with the assistance of the brand new digital rabbinical pathway and different initiatives.

A New Pathway Emerges

Plans for a digital program had been introduced in 2022 after HUC-JIR shared it might shut down its 150-year-old, in-person rabbinical program in Cincinnati. That call, which school leaders mentioned was essential to shore up their funds, shocked college students, professors and alumni and sparked ongoing, heated debates in regards to the tutorial path of the faculty. The faculty has since determined to shut the remainder of the graduate packages on the Cincinnati campus, although tutorial assets like its archives and library will stay.

HUC-JIR would create “a brand new academically rigorous versatile residency clergy program to open up the rabbinate and cantorate to college students who can not relocate to a campus metropolis,” learn an replace from the faculty in April 2022.

The brand new strategy got here after the faculty operated at a median structural deficit of about $1.5 million a 12 months from 2010 to 2020, in response to the replace. The working deficit grew to almost $4 million in 2021. Faculty leaders projected an $8.8 million shortfall in 2022 in the event that they stored the Cincinnati rabbinical program working. The faculty set a aim to achieve a balanced funds by 2029.

Rehfeld mentioned the digital pathway is part of retaining the faculty’s status and securing its future. Even when the digital program price as a lot because the residential program did, the query on his thoughts is what sort of rabbinical program goes to attract college students. He believes the digital program has a greater likelihood of that.

“One is attracting college students—folks wish to come—and the opposite, there aren’t the scholar numbers,” he mentioned.

Though the faculty’s funds stay shaky and the deficit continues, some are nonetheless reluctant to let go of the faculty’s determination to shut brick-and-mortar packages.

Rabbi Gary Zola, who retired this 12 months from his position because the Edward M. Ackerman Household Distinguished Professor of the American Jewish Expertise and Reform Jewish Historical past at HUC-JIR, worries the faculty’s on-campus tutorial assets—such because the Klau Library in Cincinnati, identified for its spectacular assortment of uncommon Jewish books—will languish within the absence of in-pereson HUC-JIR students and college students. (The digital program requires college students to begin their research with a three-day gathering on the Cincinnati campus.)

“The stature of our establishment, of any tutorial establishment, relies on its tutorial assets,” mentioned Zola, additionally govt director emeritus of the Jacob Rader Marcus Heart of the American Jewish Archives. “It appears obvious, it appears unquestionable, {that a} determination was made to jettison these main establishments which have been constructed up and treasured.”

Wanting Towards the Future

To develop the brand new digital pathway, HUC-JIR professors and rabbinical leaders needed to rethink how they do “clergy formation,” producing not simply graduates however non secular leaders in a web based surroundings, mentioned Rabbi Andrea Weiss, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost and affiliate professor of Bible at HUC-JIR.

“How do you flip college students into rabbis and cantors?” she mentioned. “That occurs within the class, exterior of the category; that is dependent upon the relationships that you just develop with our college, who’re actually dedicated to nurturing college students and the expansion that occurs whenever you enter this system to whenever you depart. So how does that happen on-line?”

She discovered these questions posed a big “problem.” However she and different college members have provide you with a construction they’re pleased with and plan to tweak and refine through the years. This system is anticipated to take college students between three to 5 years and prices $14,250 per semester.

This system begins with a three-day, in-person program on the Cincinnati campus. Then college students collect on-line for synchronous courses two days per week, alongside asynchronous programs and chevruta examine they will schedule flexibly.

College students will nonetheless take part in prayer providers collectively, both by nearly becoming a member of providers held on different campuses or main prayer at synagogues of their native communities and reflecting with classmates about their experiences.

A rising variety of on-line rabbinical faculty choices have cropped up through the years, inside and outdoors of conventional Jewish denominations. ALEPH, a rabbinical program affiliated with the Jewish Renewal motion, has an all-online program with some required in-person gatherings. Orthodox on-line packages, like Machon Lehoraa On-line Smicha or Machon Smicha, provide rabbinical ordination in as little as a 12 months. Different pluralistic or “trans-denominational” choices run solely on-line as properly, just like the Jewish Non secular Leaders Institute.

Zola mentioned a few of these packages have significant requirements, whereas others make him cautious. (One multifaith web site, for instance, guarantees fast ordination certificates for religion leaders of assorted religions, together with rabbis, for a mere $150.) He believes loads of folks can profit from the flexibleness of well-crafted on-line rabbinical packages, however he additionally worries the rabbis rising from lesser on-line choices gained’t have the instruments to guide communities properly.

“We’re going to have a rise within the variety of folks in our neighborhood who are usually not able to studying the texts of their unique language, who are usually not able to talking Hebrew, who are usually not able to dealing with the co-curricular duty of the Rabbinate,” Zola mentioned.

For that cause, in contrast to HUC-JIR’s different rabbinical choices, the inaugural cohort of digital college students are required to have already got graduate levels in Jewish research or different associated fields and excessive Hebrew proficiency. Rehfeld mentioned that’s to assist make sure the launch of a high-quality on-line program.

“We’re way more involved about admissions for a digital program, as a result of it’s the primary time we’re doing it,” he mentioned, “and we wish to guarantee … not a weakening of requirements, however a strengthening and main [of] them.”

Rehfeld believes not providing a web based rabbinical faculty choice could be a disservice to Jewish communities.

“We acknowledge that we’ve to fulfill folks the place they’re if we’re going to have a hope of understanding how we’re going to fulfill the necessity for Jewish leaders sooner or later,” he mentioned.