Organized American Judaism — not unlike other American faith traditions — is in the midst of a shakeup. The latest evidence of this was the recent announcement that Reform Judaism’s first rabbinic seminary, in Cincinnati, will soon cease ordinations at the end of the 2026 academic year.
Nothing about this strikes me as shocking or even unusual. I view religious bodies as bureaucratic extensions of living traditions in which evolutionary change is both normal and inevitable. They’re shapeshifters and those institutions that do not accommodate changes in worship style are bound to calcify over time.
This is not to deny that change can be wrenching. We tend to become deeply attached to the familiar. As a species, we anchor our livelihoods, identities and emotional equilibrium in what we like to think of as comforting routine. We want to know what’s expected of us so we may reap the rewards we think our efforts should bring.
The devil we know is preferable to the devil we do not know.
So as one might expect, the recent news from Hebrew Union College’s board of governors that its Ohio campus, opened in 1875, will cease ordaining new rabbis did not go down easy for those whose religious and professional lives are most directly impacted by the decision.
But what of ordinary North American Reform Jews (Canada is jurisdictionally connected to Reform’s U.S. institutions)? My sense is that most individual Reform congregants, if they’re even aware of the closing, are far less troubled.
Why? Because declining rabbinic student applications coupled with shrinking congregational memberships have been cited as the twin reasons for the HUC decision. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained this as follows:
The plan’s backers said it would help the school reorient itself amid its ongoing financial and enrollment crisis. Over the past 15 years, enrollment at HUC’s three American campuses fell by 37 percent, with the largest drop, 60 percent, coming in Cincinnati.
