(RNS) — Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement’s rabbinical training school, is moving its New York campus to a smaller space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as it contracts its buildings and programs to meet the Jewish movement’s changing needs.
After selling its Greenwich Village building for $75.5 million to neighboring New York University at the end of January, the seminary announced last week it acquired an old National Guard armory on West 66th Street for $34 million. Much of the net balance will allow HUC to bolster its endowment, which will provide an income stream for scholarships, among other things.
“We just don’t need the space,” said Andrew Rehfeld, the seminary’s president, referring to the Greenwich Village building it occupied for 46 years. “We’re trying to consolidate our holdings.”
The Reform movement is the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, with about 33% of American Jews identifying as Reform Jews.
HUC has seen declining enrollment over the past few decades in line with other theological schools both Jewish and Christian. In 2024, HUC had a total of 45 students in its rabbinical ordination program in New York. By comparison, a newer, independent seminary, the Academy for Jewish Religion, headquartered in Yonkers about 20 miles away, had 52 rabbinical students last year, its CEO, Ora Horn Prouser, said.
As a sign of things to come, Hebrew Union College last month launched what it calls its “Virtual Pathway,” a mostly online rabbinical degree program that will allow students to study from home with at least two in-person intensives a year. Ten students are enrolled in the Virtual Pathway and another cohort will begin this summer.
Online or hybrid rabbinical programs have already been offered by other seminaries for years. These programs are often better suited to second-career students or part-time students who keep their day jobs as they complete their education.
They also reduce the amount of space needed.
The sale of the Greenwich Village building came less than three years after the college announced it was ending rabbinic training at its flagship campus in Cincinnati amid declining revenue and enrollment. HUC also has campuses in Los Angeles and Jerusalem, but the New York location is the most popular with students and has the highest enrollment, Rehfeld said. Its Upper West Side location will also continue to offer a cantorial school and a school for Jewish education and Jewish nonprofit management.
Rehfeld said there were a number of factors for its contraction over the years: a declining number of Jewishly engaged Americans, smaller families and a general decline in denominational loyalty or affiliation. In addition, there is a growing competition for fewer students, many of whom are choosing independent seminaries like the Academy for Jewish Religion and Hebrew College in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
The armory building was recently gutted and renovated by a previous owner, the Walt Disney Company, but will need what Rehfeld said were mostly cosmetic renovations, including a space that will be outfitted as a chapel. The seminary hopes to move into the 57,000-square-foot building in 2027.