HUC, JTS form fellowship

The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation is launching an inter-denominational fellowship with Reform and Conservative seminaries. Foundation chair Lynn Schusterman announced the project with the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion and the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America on Thursday during her graduation address at HUC-JIR in New York City, where she received an honorary doctorate. The Hevruta Fellowship, which will be open to eight students and will start next fall, is a five-year program for students from the seminaries to work, study and lead programs together based on the shared values of the Reform and Conservative movements. It will be the first time students from the two seminaries have been involved in a sustained collaborative educational program. The fellowship will pay tuition and provide a stipend for living expenses during the students’ third and fourth years of rabbinical studies. The foundation will spend approximately $2.5 million over the first five years of the program.