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Conservative Ziegler rabbinical school to relocate to ‘heart of Jewish life’ in Los Angeles
(JTA) — Following the sale of its Bel Air campus last year, American Jewish University announced Monday that its rabbinical school will relocate to a commercial building in Beverly Hills, within walking distance of the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood, in 2024.
The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, which is affiliated with Conservative Judaism, will occupy 7,700 square feet in a building that is also home to a bank and other businesses. The leased space will include a library, faculty offices, classrooms and a conference room.
Pico-Robertson is home to a diverse set of Jews as well as many kosher restaurants, Judaica stores and the Simon Wiesenthal Center Holocaust museum. Multiple synagogues, including the Conservative Temple Beth Am, can be found within a few blocks. Earlier this year, the neighborhood was also the site of an antisemitic shooting spree that left two Jewish men wounded.
“With this move, American Jewish University begins a new chapter for the Ziegler School, providing our students with innovative opportunities to flourish in the heart of Jewish life in Los Angeles,” AJU president Jeffrey Herbst said in a statement.
AJU relinquished its historic 35-acre campus in 2022 amid financial pressures and years of declining enrollment, selling the property to a Swiss education company, which reportedly beat out other bidders with a $ 65 million offer.
University officials didn’t disclose the terms of the new lease, but at currently advertised rates for space in the building, the cost to AJU would come out to about $460,000 a year.
In addition to downsizing its real estate and, several years ago, closing its undergraduate program, AJU last year slashed Ziegler’s tuition by nearly 80% from about $31,000 to $7,000 in the hope of attracting more rabbinical students; only four were enrolled last year. New donations, rather than the revenue from the sale of its campus, are underwriting the reduced tuition structure, according to the school, which also recently announced the creation of a distance-learning doctoral program in Jewish early childhood education.
The ongoing shakeup at Ziegler comes amid changes across the rabbinic training landscape, as fewer students seek to enroll in traditional seminaries and fewer American Jews affiliate with synagogues and denominations. Hebrew College, a nondenominational seminary outside Boston, recently sold its suburban campus and began sharing space with a Conservative synagogue.
Meanwhile, the Conservative movement’s other U.S. rabbinical school, the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, recently shed real estate during a campus overhaul. And the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College recently condensed its rabbinical training from three campuses to two.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.