Dear Friends,

HUC-JIR News highlights an unprecedented time of both celebration and crisis.

We congratulate the 145 degree recipients of our Class of 2020 / 5780 who join our 4,000 active alumni, providing essential educational and pastoral support for communities throughout North America and continuing to put themselves on the front lines for racial justice and human rights and to bring healing to our world.

Our academic and operational teams are ensuring continuity and excellence during COVID-19: an online program for our first-year students, with a deferred 4th year of rabbinical and cantorial study in Israel; summer online elective courses for students in all programs; and a fully online fall semester, coupled with a prudent approach to campus accessibility based on local public health guidelines.

And inspired by our prophetic values that instruct us to pursue justice, we are demonstrating our belief that Black lives matter by working in partnership with our staff, students, faculty, and alumni to create Safe and Respectful Environments within our institution, starting with ourselves, and raising awareness about systemic inequity, injustice, and inhumanity within our society (see Let Us Not Be Silent Now, Alliance as a Force for Justice, and Let Freedom Ring Today: Commemorating Juneteenth).

Our sacred mission could not be more timely. Thank you for your vital support, which makes our work possible. Strengthened by each other, we will build a better world.

Andrew Rehfeld, Ph.D.
President

Catch up with President Rehfeld: Read Reform Seminary's New President Faces Pandemic Challenges in The New York Jewish Week/New Jersey Jewish News and HUC-JIR President Andrew Rehfeld on His First (Pandemic) Year in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Watch President Rehfeld's interview with Rabbi Mark Golub ’67, CEO of JBS-TV, on L’Chayim. Tune in on June 25, 2020 at 11:00 am ET for his World Jewish Congress Webtalk, and mark your calendar for July 17, 2020, for President Rehfeld's interview on the "Seekers of Meaning" podcast with Rabbi Richard F. Address '72, D.Min. '99.