(RNS) — Hebrew Union School-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform motion’s rabbinical coaching college, is shifting its Contemporary York campus to a smaller place on the Greater West Side of Contemporary york because it contracts its constructions and programs to meet the Jewish motion’s altering wants.
After selling its Greenwich Village constructing for $75.5 million to neighboring Contemporary York University at the ruin of January, the seminary announced final week it received an old Nationwide Guard armory on West 66th Boulevard for $34 million. Principal of the win balance will allow HUC to bolster its endowment, which is ready to enjoy an income circulate for scholarships, amongst a form of things.
“We factual don’t need the place,” talked about Andrew Rehfeld, the seminary’s president, referring to the Greenwich Village constructing it occupied for 46 years. “We’re trying to consolidate our holdings.”
The Reform motion is a indispensable Jewish denomination in the United States, with about 33% of American Jews identifying as Reform Jews.
HUC has considered declining enrollment over the previous couple of decades per a form of theological colleges both Jewish and Christian. In 2024, HUC had a total of forty five students in its rabbinical ordination program in Contemporary York. By comparability, a extra recent, self ample seminary, the Academy for Jewish Religion, headquartered in Yonkers about 20 miles away, had 52 rabbinical students final year, its CEO, Ora Horn Prouser, talked about.
As a designate of things to advance, Hebrew Union School final month launched what it calls its “Digital Pathway,” a mostly online rabbinical degree program that may allow students to gape from dwelling with at the least two in-person intensives a year. Ten students are enrolled in the Digital Pathway and one more cohort will open this summer.
Online or hybrid rabbinical programs have already been equipped by a form of seminaries for years. These programs are progressively better suited to 2nd-profession students or segment-time students who assist their day jobs as they total their education.
They additionally lower the amount of place wanted.
The sale of the Greenwich Village constructing got right here no longer up to three years after the college announced it was as soon as ending rabbinic coaching at its flagship campus in Cincinnati amid declining revenue and enrollment. HUC additionally has campuses in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, nonetheless the Contemporary York station is the most smartly-preferred with students and has the most effective enrollment, Rehfeld talked about. Its Greater West Side station will additionally continue to give a cantorial college and a college for Jewish education and Jewish nonprofit administration.
Rehfeld talked about there were a resolution of things for its contraction over time: a declining resolution of Jewishly engaged Americans, smaller families and a frequent decline in denominational loyalty or affiliation. As well, there is a rising opponents for fewer students, tons of whom are picking self ample seminaries care for the Academy for Jewish Religion and Hebrew School in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
The armory constructing was as soon as no longer too long ago gutted and renovated by a outdated owner, the Walt Disney Firm, nonetheless will need what Rehfeld talked about were mostly beauty renovations, along side a place that may be geared up as a chapel. The seminary hopes to switch into the 57,000-sq.-foot constructing in 2027.
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