AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The final class of students at the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in America will graduate this weekend. The school is called Hebrew Union College, and it's not closing, but it will no longer offer classes in the city where it was founded. Tana Weingartner with member station WVXU in Cincinnati has our story.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
TANA WEINGARTNER, BYLINE: It's a quiet spring afternoon on the green lawn of Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. Gone are the boisterous students playing frisbee that Rabbi Laura Baum experienced when she arrived from her home state of Connecticut two decades ago.
LAURA BAUM: I loved being a student here. It was a really fantastic decision.
WEINGARTNER: Soon, there will be no students here at all. The 151-year-old school will graduate and ordain its final four rabbis this weekend. Reform Judaism in North America was founded in Cincinnati in the 1870s, and Hebrew Union College, or HUC, is the country's largest reform rabbinical seminary. It has three other campuses in New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem, but Cincinnati is the birthplace.
BAUM: I think there's value in Jewish learning and the training of future rabbis not just happening on the coasts. So I definitely am sad to see it close.
WEINGARTNER: Four years ago, the college announced it would shutter its graduate school and stop ordaining rabbis in Cincinnati because of low enrollment and a large financial deficit. Hebrew Union College President Andrew Rehfeld says it was a painful but necessary decision. He says the school couldn't afford to maintain three separate domestic residential rabbinical programs. And it's not just HUC.
ANDREW REHFELD: All of our rabbinical seminaries have seen a general decline since the beginning of the century, so the last 25 years. We're down by about 40%.
WEINGARTNER: It's not just happening in Judaism either. He says it's part of a broader trend.
REHFELD: Liberal Judaism, like other liberal religions, including liberal Christianity, is seeing a contraction, a significant contraction, and we are just taking the steps that we have to, to manage this institution responsibly.
WEINGARTNER: A 2025 study by the Atra Center for Rabbinic Innovation reports smaller and nondenominational schools held steady or grew modestly in recent decades, but enrollment in those places has plateaued in the last five years.
REHFELD: We seem to be stabilizing at - between '20 and '25. We are now seeing an uptick this coming year, and we hope that that sustains itself 'cause we train not just rabbis, but also canters, nonprofit managers and also Jewish educators.
WEINGARTNER: He says some smaller classes in the last few years may be related to the October 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza because first-year students are required to study on the Jerusalem campus. HUC has made cuts elsewhere, too. It downsized its New York and LA campuses last year. Faculty, staff and alumni across the country protested the Cincinnati decision. Ohio's attorney general has taken legal action to keep certain assets, including religious artifacts, from leaving the state. Rehfeld calls the lawsuit unfounded because students will still come to Cincinnati to do research at the archives and library, which are home to one of the world's largest collections of Jewish printed material.
DANIELLE MINSON: We're sad. And we're also really proud. We're proud of what Cincinnati has built.
WEINGARTNER: Danielle Minson is CEO of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.
MINSON: For 150 years, Cincinnati - you know, rabbis trained in Cincinnati didn't just pass through. They connected with congregations and our agencies and our schools, and they carry what they built here into every community that they serve across the country.
WEINGARTNER: Minson says although HUC's rabbinical program may no longer be offered at its Cincinnati campus, it's not the end of an era, just the end of this chapter. For NPR News, I'm Tana Weingartner in Cincinnati.
(SOUNDBITE OF MORUF SONG, "PT CRUISER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
