Isaac Mayer Wise Photo courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives

Issue: Autumn 2005

A Brief History of HUC

Wise and Wherefores

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 the country; most Jewish clergy were German “freelancers,” officiating in the German language and lacking any real understanding of American life.

Wise understood the urgent need for rabbinical training and standards for a new generation of progressive, enlightened and modern Jewish-American spiritual leaders. And so, in 1873, with a Jewish American population exceeding 150,000, Wise formed the Union of American Hebrew Congregations – an umbrella group for America’s first 28 Reform congregations. Two years later, this body (recently renamed the Union for Reform Judaism) opened Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati as the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in the New World.

A half-century later, another Rabbi Wise – this one New Yorker Stephen S. Wise, the renowned social justice and human rights advocate – founded the Jewish Institute of Religion. Established in 1922, JIR merged with HUC in 1950; the new institution thereby gained a New York campus.

To serve the growing West Coast Jewish community, a third center opened in Los Angeles in 1954. A fourth HUC branch opened in Jerusalem
in 1963.

I.M. Wise (seated) at a Reform rabbi convention in Atlantic City, 1898. Photo courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives