News Highlights Rabbinical School of Hebrew College Celebrates Ordination Milestones
This spring, Hebrew College celebrated two significant milestones in the life of its Rabbinical School: the ordination of its largest class to date and the crossing of a remarkable threshold—more than 200 rabbis ordained since the program’s founding. At last month’s ordination ceremony, Hebrew College welcomed 16 new rabbis into the Jewish community, bringing the total number of Hebrew College ordainees to 202. As the graduates reflected in a recent class message, “We have been nurtured by extraordinary teachers and mentors and empowered to integrate our own voices with the voices of the tradition.” Together, these milestones offer an opportunity to celebrate both the achievements of this year’s graduates and the enduring impact of the program in Greater Boston and beyond.
Founded in 2003 with an inaugural class of just ten students, the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College was created to prepare Jewish spiritual leaders for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century’s evolving Jewish landscape. Situated within the College’s vibrant pluralistic community, the school has developed a distinctive model of rabbinic education rooted in rigorous Beit Midrash learning, spiritual formation and practice, intellectual openness, and a deep sense of responsibility to the Jewish people and broader world. Over the past two decades, graduates have gone on to serve in congregations, schools, chaplaincies, campuses, and community organizations across North America and Israel, helping to shape contemporary Jewish life through scholarship, pastoral care, teaching, and community leadership. “We believe that our graduates are not just serving in these positions but are transforming the Jewish community in the process,” says Hebrew College Provost Rabbi Dan Judson. “The goal of Hebrew College was not simply to be yet another training ground for rabbis, rather through those rabbis we would be impacting the institutions where are our graduates serve. Jewish institutions would become more pluralistic, more committed to a thoughtful engagement with tradition, and more open-hearted. We see evidence of that at the many congregations which are rabbis now lead, the college campuses where they serve and the new institutions which they have founded.”
The Class of 2026 reflects both the strength and diversity of that vision. The school’s largest graduating cohort ever, these new rabbis are stepping into a wide range of professional roles, including congregational leadership, campus and college chaplaincy, Jewish education, young adult engagement, and camping. Members of the class will serve communities from New England to California, from the Midwest to the South, while one graduate prepares to make aliyah to Israel. “We are sending a cadre of wonderful rabbis into the world and they are truly spreading out — California, Iowa, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Columbus, Atlanta, Colorado, etc., as well as Israel,” says Judson. “That geographic diversity is mirrored in the different jobs that our graduates will be doing — college chaplains, teen educators, young adult engagement, assistant rabbis, and spiritual leaders of congregations.”
As Hebrew College marks its 19th ordination cohort and looks to the future, these milestones underscore the continued vitality of a program committed to cultivating compelling and compassionate Jewish leaders. Grounded in Torah, nourished by community, and equipped to serve an increasingly diverse Jewish world, Hebrew College rabbis carry forward a tradition of faithful creativity and devoted service. The achievements of the Class of 2026 are both a celebration of how far the Rabbinical School has come and a glimpse of the impact its graduates will continue to have in communities across North America, Israel, and beyond. “It is heartening to see so many talented individuals choosing to rise to the responsibilities of Jewish leadership in this enormously complex and challenging time,” notes Hebrew College President, Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld. “It is profoundly inspiring to see them doing so with the humility, kindness, wisdom, courage, and grace that we urgently need from our leaders today.”
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