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Conservative rabbinical school Ziegler stops admissions, signaling broader overhaul
The Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies will not be admitting new students in the upcoming academic year, it told current and prospective students this month, as a new university president plots a dramatic overhaul of the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles.
Ziegler’s admissions office informed applicants earlier this month that the decision was part of “a broader review and reimagining of our program.” The decision follows the January announcement that the school’s longtime dean, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, would retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Current Ziegler students said Jay Sanderson, the president of American Jewish University, Ziegler’s parent institution, told them their studies will continue as planned.
The change comes amid a decadeslong decline in membership in Conservative Judaism, once the largest denomination in the United States. Sanderson previously told the Forward he envisions the seminary moving away from a strictly Conservative affiliation.
“As part of a broader strategic review of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, we are thoughtfully evaluating how best to position the school for long-term strength and sustainability,” Sanderson wrote in an email Wednesday. “This includes reviewing recruitment, program structure, communal needs and challenges.”
He added: “Our commitment to rabbinic education remains strong, and we are working with external advisors and a task force in formation to ensure that the next chapter reflects both institutional responsibility and the evolving needs of the Jewish community.”
Sanderson did not say who the external advisors were, or who was on the task force. He said the school would share more information “when appropriate.”
But one thing already seems clear: Conservative Judaism will no longer be the only path for study.
Speaking with the Forward last month about Artson’s retirement, Sanderson described the idea of “a multidenominational rabbinical school: teaching 21st century skills as well as Torah and Talmud, and bringing people across denominations to learn together.”
The changes have left many on the faculty unsure of what lay ahead — and a few unaware of what rumored decisions had become official.
Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, who teaches rabbinics and has served on the Ziegler faculty since the seminary’s inception three decades ago, said that while he was aware a Shabbat program for prospective students had been canceled, the school had not communicated to faculty its decision to pause admissions altogether. Ziegler’s admissions website does not reflect any change in outlook.
“The future is foggy,” Cohen said. “Decisions are being made, I imagine, someplace, but we’re not part of them right now.”
Ziegler, founded in 1996, was the first full-fledged rabbinical school opened west of the Mississippi. It has since ordained more than 200 Conservative rabbis, and its faculty includes some of the leading thinkers of the movement.
In recent years, the seminary sought to adapt to a changing religious landscape. As Conservative synagogues across the country have faced declining membership, Ziegler’s enrollment shrank. In 2022, after enrolling just two new students the previous year, Artson slashed the school’s tuition 80%.
Two years later, AJU sold its 22-acre hilltop campus in Bel Air — one of the largest Jewish community properties in the state — with Ziegler relocating to rented space in West Los Angeles.
Admissions have picked up amid these changes. The last two school years have seen double-digit incoming classes, with roughly 30 to 35 students total in the four-year program. And the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an umbrella organization for the movement, reported last year that half of its affiliated synagogues reported an uptick in attendance since Oct. 7.
Sanderson took over as president from Jeffrey Herbst in 2025. He previously served as chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
The American umbrella organizations for Conservative Judaism, the USCJ and the Rabbinical Assembly, have largely remained quiet about the changes underway at the movement’s second-largest seminary and its intellectual anchor on the West Coast.
But Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, head of both the RA and USCJ, responded to the admissions news in a statement to the Forward.
“For over two decades the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies has ordained hundreds of outstanding rabbis to serve the Jewish people and the Conservative/Masorti movement. We appreciate the commitment by AJU that all current students will be able to complete their education in ways that qualify them for membership in the Rabbinical Assembly.
Stressing a need for more rabbis within the Conservative movement and beyond, and nodding to AJU’s planning underway, Blumenthal added: “We look forward to being a part of those conversations, helping to ensure that the school can continue its tradition of training rabbis for the Jewish people and for our movement.”
The post Conservative rabbinical school Ziegler stops admissions, signaling broader overhaul appeared first on The Forward.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
