>>8389723 lb
Cincinnati Hebrew College is the largest seminary in North America
Founded 1875
History - Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
http://huc.edu/about/history
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise
Founded in 1875, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is North America's leading institution of higher Jewish education and the academic, spiritual, and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism.
HUC-JIR educates men and women for service to American and world Jewry as rabbis, cantors, leaders in Jewish education, and Jewish nonprofit management professionals, and offers graduate degree programs to scholars and clergy of all faiths. With centers of learning in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York, HUC-JIR's scholarly resources comprise renowned library, archive, and museum collections, biblical archaeology excavations, and academic publications. HUC-JIR invites the community to an array of cultural and educational programs that illuminate Jewish identity, history, and contemporary creativity, and foster interfaith and multiethnic understanding.
When Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, the founder of American Reform Judaism, came to America in 1846, he encountered a frontier Jewry of 40,000 people. There was but one ordained officiating rabbi in all of America; most Jewish clergy were German "free lancers," officiating in the German language and lacking any real understanding of American life.
Hebrew Union College's first building in Cincinnati
Hebrew Union College's first building in Cincinnati
Wise understood the urgent need for rabbinical training and standards for those who would provide progressive, enlightened, and modern spiritual leadership for the American pulpit. At a time when Christian denominational colleges were springing up by the score, Wise was certain that an institution of higher Jewish learning would guarantee Jewish survival in America.
The first graduating class of Hebrew Union College, 1883
The first graduating class of Hebrew Union College, 1883
And so, in 1873, with an American Jewish population exceeding 150,000, Wise was the catalyst for the creation of the Union for Reform Judaism (formerly Union of American Hebrew Congregations), with its twenty-eight congregational founding members, in order to support the establishment of a "Hebrew Theological Institute." In 1875, the Hebrew Union College was launched in Cincinnati the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in the New World.