The Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College said on Wednesday that it was “deeply disappointed” by the Ohio Attorney General’s office’s decision to file a lawsuit to block the institution’s plans to shutter its Cincinnati rabbinical programs, rejecting the claims against the school. 

In his first comments since the lawsuit was filed last week, Andrew Rehfeld, the president of HUC, told the college’s stakeholders that the institution has been open about its plans to close the Cincinnati rabbinical program since they were first announced in 2022. The Ohio campus will ordain its final rabbinical class next month, though it plans to continue hosting some programs there, including its library and archives.

“We are therefore deeply disappointed that litigation has been initiated at this moment, shifting attention away from the students we are preparing to honor [as the final graduates],” Rehfeld said. “The allegations mischaracterize our decision-making, misrepresent our stewardship of donor funds, and ignore our sustained record of transparency and good faith.”

Last Friday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit against HUC, alleging that the school was subverting the wishes of donors. The closure, the lawsuit claims, violates a 1950 agreement that required HUC to “permanently maintain” a rabbinical school in Cincinnati, the birthplace of the Reform movement in America. That clause was removed from the document in April 2022, after the college’s board voted to delete it and move forward with the closure due to debt and declining enrollment. Rehfeld rejected the allegation.

“Hebrew Union College takes the management of our philanthropic resources seriously, honoring the intentions of the many generous families who have invested in us. It is foundational to who we are,” Rehfeld said. “We are confident that we have acted responsibly in managing our assets, including our Cincinnati campus, and complied fully with applicable law. We have met openly with local community and congregational leaders about the future of the campus, and we have been clear about our efforts to steward it thoughtfully.”

While the lawsuit plays out between the Ohio attorney general and HUC, a group of Jewish leaders in Cincinnati is looking to fill the hole in the middle of the country being created by the closure of the Midwest school — the only non-Orthodox seminary not located on a coast — by founding the College for Contemporary Judaism, which will access HUC’s resources, but be non-denominational.

“What on Earth can be done with a 650,000-volume library and the American Jewish archives, if you don’t have any students, any faculty, any academic institution,” Rabbi Gary Zola, founding president at CCJ and executive director emeritus of the American Jewish Archives, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Although Zola and the rest of the 12-person board of trustees would not comment directly on Yost’s lawsuit, they said that are planning for the new school as if the HUC’s campus is not going anywhere. On Tuesday evening, after Yost’s office announced that it had filed the suit, the organization released a statement saying that “it is vitally important that assets subject to the lawsuit are used as originally intended: to support a strong, thriving rabbinical school in Cincinnati.”

The figures behind CCJ include Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi ordained in America. Work on the new rabbinical school began planning soon after HUC’s 2022 closure announcement.

“Every non-Orthodox rabbinical Seminary is reporting a decline in the numbers, and therefore, now that there are only rabbinical seminaries either on the East Coast or the West Coast, those are the places that are largely going to be served because students who are studying in those places have internships and experiences there,” Zola said.

Without a major school in Ohio, he said, surrounding states will suffer even more from the current rabbinic pipeline problem, which would leave many congregations without a spiritual leader.

This is the second lawsuit filed by Yost against HUC, who previously sued the school in 2024 after word spread about representatives from the Sotheby’s auction house visiting the institute to potentially purchase rare religious texts from the school’s five-story Klau Library. (HUC denied plans to sell the books, saying that a rare book expert and consultant who also happened to have ties to Sotheby’s was performing a routine assessment)

“Any sale could be a breach of the Hebrew Union board’s fiduciary duties to the library’s public beneficiaries,” the press release for the lawsuit said. “And, for books that can be sold, sale proceeds must be used to acquire other collection items. Using sale proceeds to reduce the college’s deficit could constitute an illegal use of assets donated expressly to fund the collection.”

HUC didn’t sell any of its books. The school settled with Yost in October 2025, agreeing to provide the attorney general’s office with an inventory of their collection of rare books and notify them 45 days before attempting any sales. Additionally, any money made from sales can only be used to purchase other books for the Cincinnati collection “unless the college’s board declares an acute financial need via a two-thirds majority vote,” the attorney general’s press release said.

But the new lawsuit accuses the college of accepting “millions of dollars in donations based on a 76-year-old promise it now would like to break. We’re suing to keep these assets in Cincinnati where they belong.” (Yost refused to comment for this piece as this is a pending legal matter.) 

Both the library and American Jewish Archives are open to the public and “incomparable to anything that exists anywhere else in North America,” Zola said. “The only other place where you will find a [similar] library… is in either New York City at the [Jewish Theological Seminary] or in Israel at the National Library. In addition, we have the American Jewish Archives located in Cincinnati on this campus, and therefore you have academic resources that just don’t exist anywhere else. They don’t exist in Chicago. They don’t exist in Dallas. They only exist in Cincinnati, and… they should be put to use for the purpose for which they were created.”

Although Zola wouldn’t disclose finances, he said the nascent school has many supporters who have made donations, along with rabbis and scholars who are interested in teaching at the school. He also couldn’t share specifics of where the new school will be located or when it would open.

CCJ leaders hope to have an initial class of ten, with larger classes down the line. The school plans to not only remove geographic barriers that would keep rabbis from entering the rabbinate by keeping a local school in Ohio, but also financial barriers by offering students a full scholarship with a living stipend in Cincinnati, a city with a lower cost of living than the major Jewish hubs with other rabbinic schools.

Organizers hope to have an interfaith focus at the school, which Zola said is a long-standing tradition in the Midwest, where Jewish leaders have to interact with non-Jews on a regular basis. The school will not include a year living in Israel — as HUC currently requires — but instead have students study in Israel for three months in a Hebrew-language program, known as an ulpan. School leaders aim to allow free expression and viewpoint diversity across the board, from the left to the right.

Does that mean the school would ordain non-Zionist rabbis? “We would not have a litmus test,” Andrew Berger, founding board chair at the CCJ, who also served as a lay leader for the HUC, told eJP, though he noted the school’s “unwavering commitment to the existence and well-being of the Jewish and democratic State of Israel.”

While HUC is affiliated with the Reform movement, CCJ will be non-denominational. “We’re aiming to address the needs of the vast majority of American Jewish life,” Zola said, pointing to the over 90% of Jews not affiliated with the Orthodox movement, according to Pew research.

Because one of the main roles of a rabbi is to build community, Berger said, the school will be an in-person program, contrasting a rising number of virtual rabbinic schools. “In order to build community, you need to live in community.”

No matter the interests that a philanthropist has, he or she should be concerned about the need for a rabbinic school in Ohio, Zola said, because the Jewish world needs leaders to help guide them.

“We believe that we can inspire our students with the heritage of 150 years of Jewish learning, a Jewish inspiration that was in Cincinnati, that served worldwide, and that we hope we can implant and imbue within a whole new generation, that will be teaching the future, my children, my grandchildren, yours and so forth.”