The Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion voted this week-end to re-establish the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York as a graduate school with a five-year program leading to ordination of Reform rabbis Since 1953 students of the Jewish Institute of religion had to spend the last three years of their study at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. The new decision makes, it possible for the students to spend their final three years either in Cincinnati or in New York.
In announcing this decision, Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of the HUC-JIR also stated that an expansion program will be established in Los Angeles. In the West Coast city, students will be able to take a two-year course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Hebrew Letters, after which they will be eligible to spend their last three years leading to ordination either here or in New York.
Rabbi Louis Newman, founder of the Academy of Liberal Judaism which was established in New York last year, revealed that discussions concerning a consolidation of the academy and the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York had been going on for the last two weeks. This discussions, he added, involved the students and the faculty at the academy various other items and “adequate local participation in the administration at the grass roots of the New York school. “He said that the academy would continue until these problems were adjusted.)
The 72nd commencement exercises of the HUC-JIR were held here yesterday. Among those who received honorary degrees of humane letters were Governor Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, and Frank P. Graham, United Nations mediator and former Senator from North Carolina. The doctorate of philosophy degree was conferred on Mrs. Mary Gray, of Berkeley, Calif who is the first woman to receive that degree under the school’s graduate interfaith fellowship program. She is a 31-year-old Congregationalist Minister who studied the Old Testament and Semitic languages at the Hebrew Union College here.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
