American Judaism #3: Andrew Rehfeld — Are Rabbinic Seminaries In Crisis?

Andrew Rehfeld, President & Professor of Political Thought of Hebrew Union College, presents his findings on the state of American Judaism. Are seminaries in crisis? What can be done about the shortage of rabbis?

View From The Top: A Discussion Series w/ Rabbi Lizzi
Rabbis are on the front lines of leading communities, speaking out for moral clarity and Jewish values, and representing Jews in multi-faith spaces. But there is a rabbinic pipieline problem in the world outside of Orthodoxy, and this moment in American Jewish history has been called “the end of the Golden Age of Judaism in America.” Are we headed for a renaissance of American Judaism or a decline? Join Rabbi Lizzi for a series with the heads of different rabbinical seminaries training the next generation of Jewish leaders, on what they’re seeing from where they sit — what challenges and opportunities, and where they see American Judaism headed.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Okay, so Hello, Dr Andrew Rayfield, where are you?

I am on our historic New York Campus at one West Fourth Street. This is this building is on Fourth Street, and the building behind me is on Broadway. That's a real building, that it's not a background, it's a real

that's what historic New York looks like.

Historic New York, it will not be ours for a watt for long. We've just sold it, and we'll be moving out in the end of 26 up back north, close to where we began in New York.

Well, I assume we are going to get to the reasons. Why. Why that? Why? Why that development happened kind of in the context of this bigger conversation. So let me, let me introduce the bigger conversation. First of all, welcome to everybody who was with us for minion and who is with us for this conversation, or both. This is our third in a series that's sort of exploring the proposition raised by Franklin for his provocative title in his article in The Atlantic last year, is this the end of the golden age of American Judaism? And specifically looking at that question by talking to the heads of all of the seminaries, or as many of the seminaries that we can talk to, because rabbi is are very much like on the front lines of all of these institutions, all of these synagogues across the country. You know, you might say, like the primary places of Jewish gathering across the country, even though, let's be honest, most Jewish people in America are not synagogue members, but but Rabbi's are seen as these communal and cultural and moral voices speaking out of the Jewish tradition, building bridges between the Jewish community and the wider world. And as we have discussed here, there is a pipeline problem. There are fewer Rabbi's getting ordained from from all of the seminaries. There are more congregations struggling to find good rabbinic leadership. So So anyway, the idea for this conversation emerged, and I'm very excited today that we get to talk to Dr Andrew rayfeld, who is the president of Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion. I'm going to read a paragraph from your bio, if that's okay, and include the rest of it in the show notes. And you should all know that the bio is extensive and it's worth reading the whole thing. Andrew Rayfield, PhD is the 10th president of Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion. He was appointed in April of 2019 and has bridged the academic and Jewish professional world because he's also a tenured faculty member in political science at Washington University in St Louis, where he was from 2001 to 29 from 22,001 to 2019 and he's been the president and CEO of The Jewish Federation of Saint Louis from 2012 to 2019 Dr reifeld got a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago. We will come back to that and an MPP from Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. He is one of the most cited theorists of political representation today, and his academic research focuses on the intersection of democracy, human rights, justice and institutional design and other little things that are, you know, totally theoretical and have no application in our model. Today, I can't think of anything more more relevant. So other areas of published research include the history of political thought, political philosophy, or the philosophy of Social Sciences, and political uses of the Hebrew Bible. And as I said, Okay, I want to, I want to cover the rest. And, you know, go find the rest in his show notes. But maybe most importantly, or at least certainly up there among Andrew's many achievements are the fact that he was a song leader and a youth director at KAM Isaiah, Israel, when I was a kid and teenager growing up there, when he was getting his PhD at the University of Chicago, and because he thinks about institutional design, he was thinking about succession planning, knowing he'd be getting his PhD and leaving the university and leaving the synagogue and trained one young teenager in playing guitar. He sat with me up on the second floor of the kam Education building and taught me, do you actually remember this? You taught me, like, eight days a week, like, Ooh, I need your love, babe. Guess you know it's true, because it's some simple chords that, in fact, are very applicable to Jewish music. Anyway, long story short, I became a singing, guitar playing rabbi, and maybe it's full credit to Dr Andrew Rayfield. So what? Welcome. Welcome to our Minion. Welcome to contact, hi and to this conversation.

Thank you, Lizzi. And what you have done with whatever the multiple seeds that were planted at New by whether for me, from the extraordinary teachers at km and from our own rabbi, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, but I will say just for this group, that you exhibited all the forward thinking, innovation dynamism when you were 1617, 18, that you do now. What are you now? 23

Oh, yeah, I'm 20. Yeah.

It's good to be back. Really good to be back. Yeah.

Well, okay, so I actually, I sent you, I sent you a bunch of questions. And most folks who are, who are here for this conversation have also been present. We, we spoke with Deborah Waxman from RRC. We talked with Rabbi Brad artson from Ziegler, where I went to school. And our hope is to continue having, you know, having these conversations with different heads of seminaries. And first of all, I'm wondering, like, to what extent you see the, you know, the kinds of dynamics the pipeline problem that I described, and like, how that's showing up from from your particular vantage point?

Yeah, thank you. The the pipeline problem is real. But the question is, what is the nature of the problem? You know that is, and let's just define what the pipeline problem is. Fewer people are coming through a system, a pipeline, to decide to become not just rabbis, but Jewish professionals of any kind. And the question is, why? And I will say from my perch here, not as a social scientist, but as a president, I hear mostly about all the things we are doing wrong, and I think a lot of the criticism is well deserved, and a lot of the criticism has no bearing on what's actually happening. So both of those things are true. That is, we can always do better. Any one of our seminaries can. But I look at this as a social scientist, and I ask the question, what is the ecosystem in which we are living, and why is it that fewer rabbis are coming through the pipeline? Not only what are we doing to pull them through, but why are they coming through? And you mentioned four years article, and I think that from the Reform Movement. And I'll start there, and then I'll expand out. I think there's a real case to be made that there was a golden age of the reform movement that began around 1946, not in, not arbitrarily pick that date. That's the beginning of the baby boom, and that from 46 to about 2010 or maybe a little before that massive expansion of congregation, massive expansion of programs, massive expansion as second generation immigrants were looking for a kind of Judaism that could integrate with an American society that was more willing to accept them Reform Judaism and conservative Judaism too. Expanded, overbuilt facilities. They were bursting at the seams too. Baby Boom generation, more and more children. Something happened around 2010 and I'd like to show you some data. Can I share slides with you? Absolutely

great. We love visuals here. Hang on one second. Great. Go for it. So

I'll show you in a second. But for HUC, since people are being born into the baby boom in 1946 that means that we have growth 20 years later, right? Because they don't start coming in until after college, and we see an increase long about the beginning of the intensity of the Vietnam War. Now that's not just driven by increased numbers of people. It's also driven by the U R J's investment in camping systems will like cuts camp which Lizzi, you went to Kutz, didn't you? Do remember

that I went to Olin saying for one summer,

summer, and it did not resonate if you only went to one, okay, but the U R J grow grew the camp system. It grew nifty again to meet the demands. And h, u c benefited from that, as had those students matured. And also, the Vietnam War was a great reason for people to enter the rabbit because you got a deferral. So from 1970 to 2010 we see our classes grow bigger than they've ever been. And then beginning in 2010 we see them decline. So I want to frame that. But let me show you some of the some of the data here. Do you see average incoming North American rabbinical class

size? Yes. Okay, describe to us what we're looking at. Absolutely.

What you're looking at is what's called a five year roll. Rolling average of incoming classes. So I'll explain to you in 1996 this 46 number up here represents the five years before incoming classes averaged ending in 1996 averaged out in 97 you go back five years from 97 ending in 97 and the reason you do a rolling average is because, because the numbers are relatively small, we get a lot of variation from one year to the next, and rather than trying to make sense of where it's going, you average it out. It's a way of normalizing it. There's a different ways of describing the data, but we found this most helpful. And you'll notice that in the mid to late 90s, we had a little bit of a dip, but always above 30 numbers. And we we would regularly get in the upper 40s or even 50. And then something happened around 2010 when at h, u c, it began to be very difficult to recruit even 30 rabbi. And I would say this is incoming residential rabbinical classes, which means this is not even ordained students. Because, of course, some people start, it's not for them. Some people start they can't. They're not permitted to stay for any number of reasons. So the actual ordaining numbers are fewer. Recent years. A couple of things to note. In 21 this is the year of Gaza, and we have a it includes a very small class that was deciding to go in April, May of 2024 when Iran had just bombed, sent hundreds of missiles. I was in Israel at the time, and obviously we had a lot of deferrals. We're seeing our numbers come back, but we don't expect this to get much beyond 20 or 25 in the in the near future. So how does that compare? I just said about the Golden Age. If you look over here on the left, you have average class size by decade now this is normalizing even further by decade. To give you a snapshot, notice that in the 20 years, as I said, an expansion of the reform movement after World War Two, we don't see much expansion. A little bit in the 60s of the rabbi medical school classes. You see significant expansion in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000 I believe now our records are shoddy before 76 so this is interpolated data, and I wouldn't go to bat for it, but after 76 I am pretty sure there was interesting a dip in the 1980s that's early gen x. This is my generation when which began to shrink, and then you you have an emergence again in the 40s. But since 2010 to 19, we're at 29 and just to be clear, because there's been a lot of focal point. I'm the first non rabbi to serve as president. The decline happened well before I Was Here by two great leaders of this institution, David ellenson and Aaron pink and both of blessed memory,

like beloved, right? Love it

absolutely Beloved. They knew what they were doing. I may not know what I'm doing. They knew what they were doing, and this is what they oversaw. So again, to focus on what the seminaries are doing wrong is, I believe, an expression of our anxiety about the state of the contraction of liberal Judaism, rather than the question of what it is that I began. And I'll say again before I go to the next slide, we can do a lot better, and we have to do a lot better. We have to lean into building pipeline programs. And I have some thoughts about how to do that, but right now, I'm just diagnosing. So why is this? So maybe this is a problem with the Reform Movement. Well, this is a a chart of incoming classes in all five major liberal residential seminaries since 2007 and the just to to describe it. This is h, u c, the light blue R, R C is in green. That's the Reconstructionist in Philadelphia. The purple is JTS, the dark purple, or whatever that dark color is, is Ziegler a ju and at the very top is Hebrew College, which is a pluralist. The other four are all denominational. And if you notice the total numbers, this is going to 2424 is an off year because of Gaza. So I think the better year to look at is 23 because that's a more accurate year, but you were declining by almost 40% in terms of incoming students during that period of time. I do want to say the greatest declines come from JTS, a ju and HUC, that is in the reform and the conservative. So you said there, there's there's a ju and JTS and there's HEC. The reconstructionists have had good years and bad years. But the other, the other note, is that the pluralist Seminary of Hebrew college is pretty state. Or even growing. I mean, that's where we see our biggest, the sort of the stable, I think it's around 10 or so, 10 to 10 to 15 students a year. So, you know, this is it's not just h, U, C, it's not just J, T, S. Hebrew college is doing something, and they have a different academic model, which we can talk about also, but something's going on that we need to address. And another thing that's going on here are the five seminaries we just looked at, is the expansion of online distance and occasional residency programs to train rabbi. And these are just a list of them. Some of them, you know, and they span from modern or open or what I call open orthodoxy. I don't know if they're affiliated with it or not, but the YCT and Maharat, are they listed, you know, are they affiliated with the open orthodoxy movement? I mean, I don't align

with it. I don't know what like that. Open Orthodoxy is a movement so much as a philosophy, but I bet I think yes, and also, but I don't know if that's like a formal thing or just a philosophical kind of posture.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Hadar just announced they're starting. Hartman has is doing something that's a little different. I don't include them here, but we might want to if their two year pilot program continues. They much different model we can talk about. And because of this, we actually launched a new virtual rabbinical program, so beginning in January, not reflected in the numbers I just showed you back here. So these numbers and these numbers don't reflect the fact that we just recruited 10 and began 10 new rabbinical students in a new rabbinical pathway for second career students. So actually, our incoming numbers here, instead of being 14, remember, this is a five year rolling average, but in 2024 it was 14. We're actually 24 and we're going to start another 12 in our virtual program. We start in person. We have occasional in person meetings, but we we teach with our professors online. So it's a way that we're addressing the pipeline program by recognizing that some people want second careers, and we have a way to get there. Well,

that's actually, that's, it's, that's really it that's dovetailing off of something that Rabbi artson said a couple weeks ago. He said that, like, there's, like, no longer is there the kind of cookie cutter student that came up through the camp system, did us? Why did, you know, went to the went to Ramah, went to, maybe, you know, an undergrad program where they majored in Jewish Studies, and like poof, here comes the, you know, well trained conservative movement, born and bred conservative rabbi. He said, No, now what they're seeing is people who, by whatever mechanism in high school, college or after, you know, as an adult, encountered Judaism as a meaningful, you know, way of living or force or whatever. And now they they want to be rabbis, but they don't have the background in prayer, they don't have the background in Hebrew. They don't, you know, and and yet, they're, like, deeply motivated to be leaders of the Jewish people. And so that's, you know, kind of the new constellation of factors as a rabbinical school they're having to work within, or constraints, or just the reality. I'm wondering if that's also true in the reform movements or the reform version of that and and like, how you're doing that with second career people. Because, I mean, a lot of folks in this very minion in this room, I think it probably relate to the person who, as a second career you know, who, like, had a meaningful career doing whatever you know. And now has, like, gotten turned on to Judaism, but like, doesn't know Hebrew and doesn't know, you know. So say more about that?

Sure. So let's talk. So we'll talk about the second career program. I want to come back to the general sociological pieces too, but since you've asked the question, it's worth pulling forward this. First of all, we've created fellowships, including Hebrew language fellowships online that people can start as sort of precursors during their day job to get prepared and become skilled in things that they never learned or that they care about. This, let me tell you, in my vision about who this program was designed for, you're 45 years old. You're living in Seattle, you're partnered, or you're married, or in whatever newfangled relationship you're in that's Jewishly blessed. You have children. Most importantly, you own property. I mean, forget about kids and marriage. You own property. But you're embedded in a community in Seattle. You've been a lawyer, an attorney, for 20 years, and you've done what you wanted to do there. Maybe you've done public law, or maybe you've become you were a high school teacher or a social worker or a professor or a public health person. You've done that is you weren't. You didn't go in this to make money. Or if you did, you made the money that you want. You. Want to do something with meaning and purpose, but you can't move for all the reasons that I've said and we have found that we have found a way to take what is distinctive about us a strong academic foundation. Professors that are tenured and are would go head and shoulders, head, toe to toe, whatever the right metaphor is, toe to toe with any other great Jewish Studies professor, and to learn from them, to learn online from them, in ways that distance learning has been perfected over the last 15 or 20 years, and to come into person using the academic resources that Hebrew Union College uniquely has beginning in Cincinnati with our library, one of the best in the world of Jewish resources, and our American Jewish archives to understand the history of the American Jewish to form cohort to do that work. So who are we getting to do? It's the number one, creating fellowships online that you can learn both content and skill set, including Hebrew seminary, Hebrew. And who we are attracting is a combination of people. We are attracting the lawyer, we are tracking the writer, we are tracking the poet. We're also attracting cantors in the field who want rabbinic mikha. We are also attracting trained Jewish educators. Now they come with more background. They're all mature, they're all ready to learn, and they understand what the program is to begin with, but that's, that's how we're that's how we're bridging that gap. Lizzi, our usual student came out of the system, Bar Mitzvah, confirmation class. Nifty, the camps, exactly right. And I want to show you a picture, just to go back to the sociological pieces about the Golden Age being over for the Reform Movement, and I think for liberal Judaism in about 2010 I'm going to show you my screen again. Well, if I can find it, I'm going to show you my screen. I

do you see the seminary? Yeah, yeah. So this is a confirmation class photo in 1974 and 75 and one of the two had counted once 98 people, and the other has 90 people. Call it 95 people a year. This is in the 70s, baby boom. Everyone's going through confirmation class. Stephen s wise is the second largest synagogue in all of Los Angeles, the largest affiliated with the Reform Movement. Any guess what the 2022 class looks like? Again, 90 and 90. How many? 15? Okay, good. Guess it's six. Sorry, and and that gasp, I would just encourage you look at your own synagogues. For those of you who come from Legacy synagogues, not, not dynamic upstarts like

Michigan, our, our, our mitzvah class is 36 times bigger than it was 10 years ago. Yeah,

exactly, exactly, right. So, right. And part of the part of the story here is what made the reform movement so strong was that it emphasized confirmation, not Bar Mitzvah or and by giving up confirmation as a focal point. We are losing people, and the fact that millennials and later generations also start their lives, their adult lives later. They're also coming back to synagogue later, after many of them have left, and they're not, they're not coming back. So we have a lot of demographic challenges, and this is the reason that we believe that a virtual program to address second career is the best chance we have of getting the most dynamic people and look, lifespans are growing low. Healthy lifespans, healthy careers are going we have a president united states who's 78 that was meant to provoke as much as anything.

Well. So, I mean, first of all, that's like, really stark to see. You know, even just the pictures, and it's true when I go home and I look at the wall at kam right, kam is for those people who have not been down to the south side and seen this iconic historic building. It's, it's this incredible building. I think it was meant to look kind of like a mosque, but also like a, you know, like a historic Moorish, like ottoman, inspired, you know, synagogue. It's got, it has a minaret, which I totally don't even understand what that's about, but, but nonetheless, it's this huge place, and it has these big front stairs, you know, in front of the enormous three front doors of the sanctuary. And all of the confirmation pictures were taken, you know, from the 50s and 60s, with dozens and dozens and dozens of people lined up on those big steps and, you know, and then the one. My confirmation class was, I think I don't know 12 or 15 people. And I think now it's, I don't even know if they take pictures anymore, because it's like, you know, do you even want to put the two or three people on the wall that went through that program? If there even still is a program? Yeah, and I shouldn't speak out of school about km, it's a great synagogue. Still, it's still there, you know, but it, but it's a shadow of what it was when I was growing up.

But Lizzi part of the shadow, as I understand it, is that the demographics of Hyde Park have changed dramatically as well, that it's not just disengagement, though that's part of it. It's not just different leaders that aren't appealing, that they may be part of it. I don't mean to cast aspersions on them, yeah, but it's also the, simply, the number of Jews that are living in Hyde Park who are interested in engaging. And my understanding is that has really been, has really contracted. I don't know if that's true or not, but well,

so I mean, what's interesting for me to hear you say out loud is admitting there was a golden age that we are exiting, or have exited. You know, what I have mostly heard from others honestly, is some version of look. We may be smaller, we may be contracting, but that just makes us leaner and more muscular, you know, like some version of, like, that contraction. That's just the sloughing off of, you know, look, there's always attrition. Look in any, I mean, this is something Brad artson said, in any ethnic community that moves, you know, that is an immigrant from another place to America, there was a melting pot effect. And that four generations, five generations down from those original that original, like wave of immigrants, it's a much smaller community than, you know, than it was when they came. You have to expect that. And the fact that we're even here at all is a win. And

let me, let me just add to that and then tell you why I'm telling you the other story. Yeah, that's true in the following sense, think about all the things that have happened even just the last 15 years. Or ish safaria, Hartman, Mishkan, Chicago, there's this place in Chicago. It's led by a dynamic young leader. I mean, it's fantastic, right? You have new kinds of I've got that's all true, and it's dynamic and it's exciting. The access through safari to Texas has democratized this and made it so easy. So I don't take away from any of that, and it may well be until the totality that there's we have the same amount of coffee, but it's like Nestle's crystals. It's just concentrated anymore, you know, in the small maybe. But I think that if that's the case, you should be wary of anyone that says things like, there are 2 million Reform Jews, because people, people say that, and in fact, Pew reported there are 2 million people that identify as Reform Jews, but we can't, and that turns out to Yeah, a lot of people that you know, a lot of people that I know, say, Yeah, I don't do much. I'm a reformed Jew.

Yes, they use reform as a euphemism for, quote, bad or non practicing or, you know, so

we can't have it both ways. And that's all that I ask that we are honest and candid about the sociology of what's happening. We make the most of it, we celebrate what's happening, and we focus on that. And part of my challenge at h, u c, is that we are so the reason that I've led with we're no longer in the golden age. Lizzi so long as the Golden Age is in your mind, is what success looks like. Anything short of that will be failure, and that's a mistake. And so we have four campuses. We have built infrastructure that well exceeds our needs, and that's been true for decades, and we are now dealing with that in a way that I'm really proud of our board and proud of our leadership, that we are trying to consolidate and concentrate into Nestle's crystals, right the best of what we do. So we can be vibrant, so we can be the Mishkan, so we can be the Safari, but that means not maintaining everything everywhere, the way we used to do it when we were so big and we had money funneling in that well exceeded. We had money coming in, we had students coming in. And frankly, I'll say one last thing, yeah, the closed nature of the denominations, which included a closed access to a protected job search process, yes, introduced anti competitive practices that kept us from innovating because we did not have to our money was secure from congregations. Our students were secure from the camps and jobs were plentiful, but it meant people had to come through HUC. What do we have to do to innovate curriculum? What do we have to do to be flexible? So I could tell stories about that, but that's been a big part of what we've been changing in the last five years, to be more flexible, to meet people where they are, and be focused on our outcomes, not on keeping things the way they've always been.

I mean, I agree, obviously like to be kind of locked into a backward facing, you know, if we could only just go back there, using history as a kind of a vision of what ideal looks like is dangerous. And I feel like, you know, Arnie Eisen wrote about this, you know, decades ago when he talked about, like, nostalgia being a primary driver for many Jewish people and, and, and, you know, when we were starting Mishkan, I had people saying, but like, if you don't have a building, then people won't understand what you're doing, you know, because, like, the way that people relate to Judaism is through a building, you know, like the synagogues they grew up in. And I just had to say, like, well, for the people that really need that maybe this won't be for them, you know, or for the people who really need whatever, whatever, backward facing, not, not that a building is backward facing inherently, like we all need spaces in which to, you know, pray, but what that looks like, and how you interact with that financially, and whether it's yours or you're sharing it, whether you're, you know, renting it, whether you move around, you go to different places in the city so that you can, you know, access different populations and like all of the different reasons why a movement or a synagogue might, you know, have a different relationship with real estate, even than, you know, a synagogue would have chosen to 25 years ago or 50 years ago. It's like, these are all like. These are all on the table for discussion, and it's just, you know, I'm it's not this movement that you're talking about is actually, I think, quite destabilizing and threatening to many people who kind of don't know what to make of a Judaism that looks and feels different from the one that they found a lot of comfort in, even if they didn't love it growing up, it still was familiar. It's

familiar. I mean, look, the destruction of the Second Temple and the creation of rabbinical Judaism took a lot of pain, and not just the pain of the obvious destruction and killing and death and relocation all of that, but I mean, the pain of not having to worship and to think about the most important things in life in the same way that you used to rethink it completely. One of the things I will, I think that it's important to note too, is, I'm not sure I'm prepared to say this, but really the end of the movement as an idea that is helpful to American Judaism, I think instead, I mean, look, what is a movement? A movement begins with a set of clearly articulated shared values. It then goes on to articulate aims, and that sets up institutions to achieve those aims. So those three steps, values, aims and institutions. Think about the labor movement, right? What were the values that all workers had rights, including children? What were the aims of 40 hour work week, child labor laws, safety laws, what were the institutions, well, legislation, unions, right, the growth of unions, et cetera. And as those aims were achieved, and as the values were commonly shared, the institutions began to die. Unions took a steep drive, and they're only coming back now, because there are certain areas that we see the values are not being respected. I think the same thing is true with the Reform Movement. Same thing is true with the conservative movement. The values that we had of liberal Judaism are, quite frankly, the same values of most non orthodox or non fundamentalist Judaism. If you look at the Pittsburgh platform, much of what it says can be is captured in Jonathan Sacks book on science and religion. And that's, that is,

what is the Pittsburgh platform? And who is rabbi? Jonathan Sacks by Congress,

yeah. Okay, sorry. The Pittsburgh platform was the first statement of Reform Jewish principles published, I think was 1885 and it stated what our vision of God, of Torah of Israel were. And part of what it was about God and faith was that it would be bounded by reason, that reason was the way that God made God's majesty of the universe discoverable to human beings. If you read Jonathan Sacks, the great modern Orthodox rabbi of blessed memory, died too young a few years ago, who was no fan of Reform Judaism. He articulates a book in the great transformation. Go. It's an argument of how religion supplements science. It doesn't. It's not magical. The magic of faith is bounded by reason and science. Well, that's that's a reform principle. So my view is that we are all reformed Jews with a small r now, and that with a reform movement has to be understood more as a network of interlocking institutions, and the value of that network is extremely high and needs to be maintained and strengthens for pipeline for support, but that becomes a network more like the Jewish Federations of North America or the JCC Association, because it is no longer articulating what is distinctive about Reform Judaism, or what it what is distinct about Reform Judaism and so distinctive anymore. My guess is, Lizzi, you would endorse most of what I what Reform Judaism is you just practice in a different way.

Well, I mean, it's, it's also interesting, because the value, well, what you were saying earlier about the kind of closed nature of a movement. So if you get ordained by the school, then you can apply for jobs in the movement. If you have a synagogue in the movement, you cannot accept rabbi to your synagogue who have not been trained in the movement. So there's like this real kind of allegiance. And my understanding now is basically synagogues can hire whoever they want to hire, because it is hard to hire Rabbi out there, and there are rabbi who need jobs, and if a synagogue wants to hire like, you still have to apply, right for like, an exemption, but like, you'll probably get it and that there's just a lot More porousness between all of the various lists, right? That's

right. The way that's happening is the CCAR, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is the professional group of reform rabbis, has increasingly opened up its admission to Rabbi's from Ziegler and from other seminaries, and that way you are J congregations can hire right? CCR rabbi, but the CCR Rabbi are no longer trained by HUC, but the reform rabbi is all the same,

right? Yeah, I mean, and just to say, like, Mishkan is not a paying member of any synagogue union, and so far that hasn't hurt us. And every now and again, there's a conference or a, you know, a thing that I'm sort of jealous, actually, to not be part of a movement, because there's, like, a collegiality, there's a, you know, a shared set of reference points and values, you know, that it I think it feels really good to be part of, and yet, I'm seeing a lot of those values reflected in some of the other institutions that have cropped up in the last decade, 15 years that you mentioned on, you know, showed many of them on that on that sheet. And it seems like there are more options for Jews, for synagogues, for Rabbi's, for anybody who's interested in pursuing Jewish learning, like there are more avenues for them to explore. Whereas once upon a time, it was like you went to rabbinical school and there were two options, like reform and conservative if you weren't Orthodox, which, which in theory, if you weren't looking at the numbers in theory, that seems like a great expansion, like a great opening up of access to Judaism,

but there is. It is an opening up of access, but with the lack of commitment, with the lack of membership, we are now living on borrowed time. So remember all the money that was coming in from congregations to support the institutions as that has gone out. And I want, I'd like to show you three other slides, if I could go for it, okay to show this. But as that has gone out, our business models depended on congregational funding. So congregations, right now, during this period where they're withdrawing their funding, are benefiting from all of the funding that produced Rabbi's even, like you Lizzi I mean, I actually conservative movement didn't support a ju but it does support JTS and certainly the reforms movement. So let me, let me show you this. Okay, you see the you RJ and Isaac Mayor wise there? Yes. Okay, so the Union of American Hebrew congregations, now called the Union for Reform Judaism, was founded in 1873 and it was founded for one reason, to establish Hebrew Union College in 1875 and the guy that did it was Isaac Mayer wise, a rabbi who had tried to set up a seminary before in the United States and failed, just like a reform seminary failed in Germany prior. And what he realized is, without the institutional support of congregation saying, we need Rabbi for us, so we're going to invest, it's not going to be supported. And so they have supported. They used to cover the entire budget of HUC since 1920 Three, we've been independent of the URJ, but they continue to support us. So in 1981 was the last time we revised our agreement, we automatically receive 44 cents of every congregational dollar paid into the movement congregations to be a member of the u, r j pay. Say it's $100 we get $44 of it. It comes right off the top. Excuse

me, 44 cents of every dollar that a person pays to their synagogue goes to No,

not that a person pays to the synagogue. Of every congregation pays to the u r j, oh, goes to h, u c, so a small percentage of the budget. Maybe it's 3% of a congregation's budget goes to you. RJ, dues. We get 44% of that small membership fee that the congregation pays into the U R, J comes straight to h, u c. So since 2010 This is the trajectory of how much we get, this is the 44 cents. And by the way, in exchange for this automatic payment, we agree not to do any fundraising in congregations. So in 2010 we received $10.9 million that was, at the time, about a little more than a little less than a third of our budget. Our budget's been pretty constant, and which means it's declined, because we've had to cut in 2019 when I first came we had lost three, over $3 million this is annual revenue that's 10% over a little less than 10% of our budget that we lost in 21 after COVID, we lost another over $2 million and in the Four years since, we've now lost another basically another million. We're expecting to lose three to 5% a year. So all of a sudden, the structure that was so well funded over funded for our needs because of the burst of the golden age of the reform movement, which drove funding and led to our over expansion of campus and programs. Now, all of a sudden, the contraction of congregational support, and people are pulling their congregational support for various reasons. You know, the congregations, you're a congregation, I'm sure Lizzi you're not. You're probably you don't have your private helicopter yet. Do you? No, that's too bad. Well, you know, you really need one. You should make sure your congregants know that. I

mean, it's interesting though, like I one of the things that we're talking about when talking about, what do we, you know, if we have surplus, what do we do with it? We're talking about making an endowment, not building a building. Because, you know, I think what we've seen is that the investment in structures often, at the end of the day, ends up hampering and constraining institutions, synagogues, more than helping and at the same time, you know, obviously, it's not like these programs and buildings that you're describing, the movement invested in, you know, with probably so much excitement at The time. You know, they didn't, they didn't know differently. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it was like a really, it felt like a very exciting time to live in that boom and to build,

oh my gosh, absolutely. I mean, the building of the expansion of the Jerusalem campus. Our first campus was one building in 1963 a white modernist building called the Raoul building. Then we expanded massively into a Moshe Safdie designed campus in 1986 it's spectacular, and it really is spectacular, beautiful. It's really beautiful. We finished it three years ago through an investment by the Toby family philanthropies, fully paid for. And then now has should come visit it. Come visit come use it. We need people on it. We don't have people for it. So that's our big, big challenge. Well,

I mean, I feel like there's so many directions this conversation that could go. First of all for the people who are still here, if you have questions, feel free to drop them into the chat or observations. You know, I, I, I wanted to ask you to what extent you feel like or actually, you know what, I'll since you presided over a process that I think was, well, actually, I should let you talk about it. Almost every major institution that has existed, you know, for for generations, has in the last decade, had some kind of a me too, reckoning, like really looking at, you know, the historic abuses of male professors, leaders throughout over the decades, and kind of people coming forward to say the ways in which they were hurt by the institution. And I wondered if you could talk about the reckoning that you presided over that right, you know, like, what would that look like? What? And you know, what? The results were in terms of, I don't know, the feeling of integrity or loss or anger, like what came up, not, you know, just, not just the findings, but also, like how that emotionally affected everybody in the system, you know, and kind of where you stand now, sure,

just a brief bit of background, and then I'll answer that. So when I came into the job in April 19, there had been a public reckoning with a researcher who was no longer at HUC, who I knew I actually had hired for a demographic study in St Louis, but he had been seen to have been acting inappropriately. And as I came in, I launched a task force to ask the question, Well, if that happened and we didn't know about it, what else is going on? And we did a lot of good work about that. It was shared by an outsider and an insider, and it was important to me that we had both for the integrity of the process. And then, a year and a half later, in the spring of 21 we published an obituary of a professor named Michael Cook, and the obituaries that our team writes, I mean, everyone should be, you know, made a saint. You know, that's just the culture. And unfortunately, although all the saintliness of Professor cook, I think, was real. That is, he was a beloved teacher. He was a great mentor, but he also did things that were completely inappropriate, and the outcry for the the obituary that we published caused a lot of pain, and we heard about it, and I'll tell you, I never would have published an obituary like that had I known and that pain and the outcry were very helpful to me bring to the board a case to take very seriously the investment of doing a historic reckoning. I said this was something we didn't know about until this came out. I don't want this happening again. We have a legacy, and this is coming on the heels of somebody else that had been a few summers ago, and within 10 days, which was the minimum amount of time necessary from our governance rules to bring a major proposal in and vote on it, because you want to follow process, we authorized major investment contracted with the Morgan Lewis law firm. And over the period of about six or eight months, they did an investigation, inviting people who wanted to speak to them confidentially, I had no involvement in the investigation, and they issued their report 170 survivors of the some things were pretty dreadful happened, and we published it in Full in December. And that's different than some institutions do. I felt strongly that we publish it in full, because if not, I thought the integrity of the process would be would be jeopardized. It's still out there. I mean, it's a it's not a great history of of H, U, C, most of the real infractions occurred before 2010 so they are descriptions of things past, but not entirely. And after that, we embarked on a Teshuva process that that took us until this year. We finally completed it this year, and we're now moving into sort of phase two, longer term. You don't you don't just stop, but we implemented processes. We looked at how students are being treated today, at safety valves, for reporting, accountability structures. What I found Lizzi I mean, it's very interesting to see people were so excited that we were taking this seriously, that there was a movement by some, to publicly celebrate how the Reform Movement is dealing with its past history. And I, you know, the after we started ours, both the CCAR and the U RJ launched their own investigations, and I remembered something I'd learned at the Federation in Saint Louis when we made a commitment to doing this kind of work to and I stood up and I said, at a public meeting, every institution has to look carefully at themselves. And I got the feedback, why don't you look at your own self first before? And it was very good. So I said, Look, we're not going to do any celebration of this. We're simply going to do the work. And so quarterly updates, we inform the community. And it was that slow and steady progress, I think that actually built the trust that we need to move forward. It's it's not perfect. We did things that I think I would do differently again, but I think it was a very healthy process, an important one. We've heard back from many of our alumni. It was painful. It was painful.

Yeah, no, I can imagine. I mean, so much of what you're describing not not not just this, but also this is it feels like what's happening in the Jewish community is a microcosm of what's happening in the wider society, what's happening in our. Wider society, as we're looking backwards, make America great again. And people are like, oh, yeah, wouldn't that be so great? You know, let's go back to oil and coal production. Let's go back, you know, like also resting on, resting on the successes of previous generations, and then basically taking them for granted, and then throwing out the Institutions and Values needed to move those forward into the future for our children, like I'm, you know, it's something that I'm worried about. And then also, obviously, the, you know, the need for internal Reckoning and being really honest about abuses of the past, so that we can, so that we can just be, be honest, and then move forward with clarity and not hiding things and trying to be as just as responsible leaders as possible and stewards of the future for all, for all our people. You know who our people are, even as our people are evolving. I mean, the constellation of who the students are. It used to be that like a female student in the building was a really unusual thing, and now it's mostly female students in the building and not

binary, right? I mean, well, no, it's mostly binary, but we do have a number of non binary. You know, the fact that we have some non binary doesn't mean that suddenly it's everyone is non binary. Binary, no, but

I guess, I mean, like, the culture of a place, and you know, how comfortable people felt speaking out. And also, I mean, I would imagine, I actually would not be shocked if the male students in the school are sort of like, Hey, I sometimes feel uncomfortable here, you know? And then it's like, oh, wow, this is actually important to reckon with. We want everybody to feel comfortable. And that's right, right? Like that there. It's just new conversations that need to be had that are made possible through okay, like reckoning with the past so you can put it to bed, so that you can actually live in the present.

Lizzi, so there are a couple com questions, and Taryn had his hand up or there,

wonderful, wonderful, great. So Taryn, why don't you go ahead and share?

Yeah, first of all, thank you so much. This is amazing, and I'm, I'm a very proud kids alum from the mid 2000s so like, this is kind of how I've been feeling. And I wanted to ask about because this is something that I've seen working on campus. What is h, u c doing about funding for students, because all the stuff with student loans is so crazy, like, what does that process look like? And also, is there any thought to like changing curriculum like Ziegler is,

yeah, so we've did, we did a major curriculum reform that went into place this past academic year. This would be the second lot more flexibility, outcomes oriented. So you don't have to do our Hebrew class if you already know Hebrew. Just to give a one example, and in terms of the funding we have. First of all, we're all very concerned about what the Trump administration is doing to affect student loans, and none of us really knows what the outcome is going to be. So I can't make any promises or guarantees or much planning, but what we have been doing, and I don't know if we're going to be able to keep it, is excusing or discounting tuition for students based on need, so that reduces the amount of debt they have to take, but it also, unfortunately, is reducing the amount of income we're generating from tuition, because if we're excusing tuition that you'd otherwise have to pay, it means you don't have to take out loans to pay it, but also means we don't have The money we need to run the institution as our funding streams contract. So we're looking more carefully at that. One of the good news about bringing in second career students is they tend to have much less need, you know, and we are able to charge them full tuition, and it supports not only a more professionalized, immediate class of Rabbi's coming out, but also in a sustainable way that's more sustainable than when we're discounting or lowering tuition for all.

Also, hi Taryn, it's nice to see you. Long time. No See All right, so we're kind of, we're coming up on our time, I guess, you know, like the Jewish people, we're kind of the ever evolving people, you know. We move around the world. The temple gets destroyed. We recreate the tradition. Move around the world. It gets, you know, kind of re constituted in different places, you know. It melds with different cultures. It's affected by different music genres and culinary traditions and different expressions of what Halakha and Jewish law looks like and Jewish you know. So here we are in America in 2025, or 5785 um. Hmm. And I wonder if you could actually paint the picture of, you know, what you what you think or hope like, is the direction that we could be moving, you know, with with skillful investment, with, you know, the reality of what the community actually looks like, who people are marrying, where people are living, how people are choosing to raise their kids like. You're both a sociologist and also, you know, an academic, and you run this institution, you're seeing what Rabbi's are interested in doing, where they've come from and where they're going. So I wonder if you could paint, not sort of the morose picture of, you know, where, like, what have we lost? But like, what, what do we what do we stand to to gain, you know? Or where might we be moving that we could get excited about.

Thank you, and I'll do this in 90 seconds, right? I

mean, it's fine. It's fine.

I see a world in which we are lean in my biggest concern about what has happened in the past is that we will give up the very, the most important things about what movements gave us, because we feel we're post denominational, because by and large, we are all, in my view, Reform Jews, small arm that is, all of the reforms of the 19th century have been adopted by modern Jews. And I think the two urgent things we have to do is, number one, rebuild institutional connectivity and responsibility of institutions for the production of the next generation, whether that's investing in religious education or, by the way, Senior Education or rabbinical education that our seminaries cannot survive if those who are coming and benefiting most from Judaism are not investing in them on a regular basis, feel the responsibility have the network of the congregations, and that's what we've lost. So that's that's number one. Number two, we haven't even mentioned it here, but the divisions around Israel and a complete, in my view, misunderstanding of what it is to support Israel and the Jewish people that has now emerged, and the war isn't helping it, but the idea that you could take a political position about a government and that be confused for your support or lack thereof of the Jewish people is a disgrace. The focus on the Jewish people is no more a focus on the support of government than to say you love America means you have to bow down to Barack Obama, Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Those are completely different ideas, and the Jewish community has to get over the idea that we expect our next generation to have to, you know, support or not support any any issue, including and maybe especially in times of war. So what we're seeing in in Israel right now and in the reaction in America is really troubling now that was, in a sense, if you read it, what I'm trying to say is a little more to be more open, but could cut either right or left. I want to say that on in America, we need to create space for people who are feeling alienated from Israel to be at home in our congregations, even with their feelings, without being overreactive to them. I saw Edgar carrot speak, and he said, you know, we are ants crawling across the forehead of someone on a picnic, and we think that somehow what we do is going to change the pants that they wear the next day. I mean, the fact that we feel what we do about the policies of the government. Yes, we all need to be involved, but let's focus on building our community. Let's not be overreacted to our children and grandchildren, but let's expect our children and grandchildren to not and people in the world to not ignore the real antiSemitism that is there. And if you think that antiSemitism is not a threat because you think it's all drummed up by the right, you're engaged in the same kind of magical thinking as if you are on the right, and you think that everyone that says they're an anti Zionist supports Hamas. I just sort of get over it. So I think these are the things I'm trying to do this quickly until no that, I mean strong supporters of the Jewish people are right to live freely in in our historic homeland, but that doesn't mean to oppress other people. That's all,

yeah, I mean, I, I think you're I think you're right, and I that's a whole separate conversation we could have, honestly, that we don't have time to have right now, but at some future point, because I do think, I mean, it's not just happening in congregations, also, I'm watching it happen in, like, movement spaces. I was just talking to somebody who works in the, you know, field of reproductive rights, and it's like, if, if, in each one of our areas, and I think of myself as, like, I'm a rabbi of. American Judaism, sitting in Chicago, you know, for a community whose members are primarily in Chicago, but around the country, and that that's my job to serve us and to help us feel empowered in the ways that we can, you know, act in our lives and in the life of our communities where we are most efficacious, and that we may have big feelings about things happening somewhere else, but actually part of that efficacy and actualization of ourselves is knowing how to manage our own feelings and talk about them and interact with other people who feel differently, and that that actually is where a great center of power lies. But even if we feel like our our feelings should fix the conflict over there, should, you know, at the end of the day, I love that image of where ants crawling across the forehead of somebody, and we think that we can change the color pants that they're wearing, but I think that that is a it's even though it's very self evident to me and anybody who's running organizations that are not primarily about Israel advocacy or or, you know, Gazan advocacy, or whatever, like, primarily focused on that conflict. I think it's very hard for people who care deeply about the issue to really separate those two things. What you're talking about is like a, you know, one of the hardest things for many people who care deeply to do. So

maybe I can leave you with one last thing, because I am going to have to go two to two. But a little Torah, a little book of Esther. Beautiful Book of Esther begins with the story of Vashti, who now has rightfully be reclaimed by feminists as the great standard bearer of what feminism is about. She's asked to dance, we presume, naked, in front of the king in his court, and she says, No friggin way, and she's willing to suffer the consequences for it. And we hold her up rightfully as someone that stands up, that puts her voice to power and and takes the hit and suffers for it. Use that as example. One who's the other protagonist in the in the story is Esther, who's also held up as a great female leader, but we tell a story about her that bears no relation to the text. So I'm going to tell you the story in the text, and you can another time. Okay, you'll have me back for Purim or something sort of the text is Esther, who didn't really care about all the social justice stuff that Fauci did. She had to be prodded by her uncle Mordecai, even just to know that she needed to do something to save her people. She is the queen now, and she's slow to act. She doesn't act. And it takes his saying, don't think you're going to escape unharmed. You're going to be killed too. I mean, that's the dissolve in the text. She ruminates. She doesn't issue a statement that she's got it under control. She limits the awareness that something's being planned to just the people of the Shushan, not the entire community, who go faster. If then she has a plan, it's going to take one party and then two parties, and she waits. Meanwhile, the people in the provinces are suffering the pain of, oh my god, we're going to be destroyed by haman's decree, and then she acts, and she acts decisively, and she does take a risk, and that action is what saves the Jews. So you have two models. You want to speak truth to power and always say what you want to do and be that amp crawling over the forehead like Fauci and get banished. Sometimes you have to, and sometimes there's a value to that. Or do you want to be Esther, morally flawed, needing to be prodded, needing to understand that you're not going to escape and make it about you, in order to act, but then to act strategically, to affect change. We need Vashti. We need Esther. The question is always when. So thank you for having me on that's the big message for this moment.

Thank you so much pleasure to talk to you and reconnect with you. Lizzi from my end,

thank you for starting the recording again, so I can say for the record, you are like the the the embodiment of everything that any teacher does, to see a student, and I had this much control or effect over the totality of who you are, but just even be part of it, to see you flourish, to see what you've done with your community in Chicago, it's inspiring to me and to every teacher out there. So thank you, and thank you for paying it forward to everyone that you're leading in Chicago. You're just doing a remarkable job. Thank

you. I'm very humbled by that. Yeah.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai