Shuly Rubin Schwartz, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, is stepping down subsequent 12 months after main the Conservative motion’s flagship college and rabbinical seminary since 2020.
Schwartz introduced her resolution at a gathering of the JTS board of trustees on June 16. In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Company, Schwartz, the primary girl chancellor within the establishment’s historical past, stated she deliberate when she was appointed “that I might not be there for a prolonged tenure.
“I’ve been right here for 34 years,” stated Schwartz, a professor of Jewish historical past at JTS who beforehand served as dean of its Albert A. Listing Faculty of Jewish Research, dean of the Gershon Kekst Graduate Faculty and as provost. “After a sabbatical, I’ll return to the school, so it’s not with something apart from love and pleasure about what we’ve been in a position to obtain and albeit, modeling wholesome management transition after we’re in a powerful place.”
Schwartz will step down on the finish of 2025-26 educational 12 months. In a information launch, JTS stated an government search agency helps discover the ninth chancellor within the college’s 139-year historical past.
“Over the course of Chancellor Schwartz’s tenure, JTS has confronted a fancy and evolving panorama. From the COVID-19 pandemic and the pivot to digital studying, to rising threats to civil discourse, the tragic occasions of Oct. 7, growing antisemitism and stress on educational establishments – she has led us with readability, nuance, and compassion,” stated Alan Levine, chairman of the board of trustees, in an announcement. “Via her distinctive management, Chancellor Schwartz has not solely guided the establishment by way of these turbulent occasions however has ensured that it emerges stronger than earlier than.”
Schwartz, who grew up in Wantagh, Lengthy Island, and lives on the Higher West Facet, has a lifelong connection to JTS: Her grandfather and her mom, Gilla Pearlstein Rubin, graduated from its Instructor’s Institute; her father Rabbi Mordecai Rubin was ordained at JTS. She was the third non-rabbi to be appointed chancellor, after her predecessor, faith scholar Arnold Eisen, and the scholar Cyrus Adler, who served from 1924-1940.
In an interview, Schwartz, 72, described what she felt have been her key accomplishments as chancellor. They included the transition to on-line studying in the course of the pandemic, a brand new Division of Lifelong and Skilled Research as properly the launch of a artistic writing MFA program to be headed by the acclaimed Israeli author Etgar Keret.
JTS additionally employed 4 school throughout her tenure. They embody historian Sandra Fox because the inaugural Rifkind Chair in Jewish Historical past, endowed by an influential board member shortly earlier than his dying earlier this 12 months.
“Since that’s my subject, I’m thrilled about that, notably as a result of it’s the final rent I made,” Schwartz stated.
Whereas JTS affords graduate levels in Jewish research and schooling, and undergraduate levels by way of a dual-degree program between Listing Faculty and Columbia College and Barnard Faculty, it’s maybe finest often called the primary coaching floor for Conservative rabbis and cantors.
The non-Orthodox rabbinical and cantorial faculties had seen a decline in enrollment in recent times, and Schwartz and Levine each stated JTS has been making it a precedence to spice up the “management pipeline” by way of, amongst different strikes, an “rising leaders” fellowship and a low-residency preparatory program for potential rabbis.
This previous 12 months JTS ordained 9 rabbinical college students and three cantorial college students, a rise over latest years. Within the fall JTS will welcome 17 rabbinical college college students and 4 cantorial college college students.
“Not sufficient younger folks see themselves as being referred to as to lives of service to the Jewish folks,” stated Schwartz. “As a folks we had misplaced the artwork of figuring out younger expertise, and being too timid to say, ‘Have you ever ever thought of changing into a rabbi?’ We needed to rebuild that muscle.”
Schwartz stated that regardless of a shrinking variety of pulpits as Conservative congregations contract or merge with different synagogues, “our college students are in excessive demand.” In travels throughout the nation, she stated, synagogue leaders typically say they’re keen to rent JTS-trained rabbis when their very own rabbis retire.
In keeping with a Pew Analysis Middle examine, as of 2020 17% of American Jews recognized as Conservative in comparison with 37% who recognized as Reform. Regardless of these tendencies, Schwartz says she has visited “dozens of synagogues over these 5 years which are flourishing.”
“It appears to be extra a disaster of confidence than an precise disaster,” she stated
After the COVID epidemic and extra lately the trauma of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, she stated, extra Jews ”need to discover their connection to the Jewish folks. And so a lot of them are drawn to our synagogues and synagogues of different denominations.”
What makes Conservative Judaism interesting within the second, she stated, is its “principled centrism” in a world that has grow to be more and more polarized. Positioned between Orthodox Judaism and the extra liberal Reform and Reconstructionist actions, “we will see the significance of full engagement with the world, and likewise the significance of custom and prayer, in Hebrew, and clearly love and connection to Israel.”
Schwartz stated JTS stays a Zionist establishment at a time when different non-Orthodox seminaries are accommodating non- and anti-Zionist candidates. “That is without doubt one of the issues that’s probed” in the course of the software course of, she stated.
Schwartz’s resolution to step down comes amid different management adjustments at Conservative establishments. In Israel, American-born Rabbi Matt Berkowitz takes over subsequent month as president of The Schechter Institutes, which incorporates the Jerusalem-based Schechter Rabbinical Seminary. In what Berkowitz described in an announcement as a “liminal second,” he’ll change Rabbi David Golinkin, a number one Conservative authority on Jewish authorized points who in his 35 years as head of The Schechter Institutes has sometimes clashed with extra liberal-leaning rabbis and establishments, particularly over the ordination of LGBT Jews.
The Schechter Institute of Jewish Research additionally has a brand new dean, Sarah Schwartz, a Bible scholar who previously headed Schechter’s Bible research division.
Requested concerning the new management and her potential successor at JTS, the outgoing chancellor stated the motion wants leaders ready for the surprising.
“Once I took this job in July of 2020, I had no thought how lengthy COVID would disrupt our lives. None of us anticipated Oct. 7 and the influence that may have,” Schwartz stated. “I hope we discover somebody who understands the complexity of the world that we live in now and the big presents that JTS brings to the desk in serving to people make that means.
“All I can say is, we’re getting ready leaders for the longer term, which suggests we do not know what they’re going to confront.”
For more information, go to JTA.org.