Ohio Attorney General Sues Hebrew Union College for the second time. The move underscores a history of corruption, prejudice, misconduct, abuse, and questionable governance practices within the organization.

Several weeks ago, Anglican Watch announced that, at the request of several Jewish individuals, we’ve launched an investigation into several key organizations and individuals within Reform Judaism. And while this story was not planned as our initial post in the series, the recent news that the Ohio Attorney General is suing Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) for the second time serves as an excellent lead-in, while underscoring egregious ethical and governance issues, both within HUC-JIR and among leading Reform Jewish entities and individuals.

So what is HUC-JIR?

HUC-JIR is the seminary for the Reform Movement and a leading institute of higher education.

Formed in 1950 via the merger of Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Institute of Religion (a New York-based seminary), HUC-JIR is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas. As such, it serves as the main seminary for training rabbis and other leaders in the Reform Movement. The school operates campuses in Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Jerusalem, with the latter the only Reform seminary in Israel.

Like many seminaries, HUC-JIR has faced declining enrollment and smaller budgets in recent years, prompting efforts to cut costs and increase operational efficiency.

Cost-cutting efforts led to the first Ohio attorney general lawsuit against HUC-JIR

These cost-cutting efforts appear to have led the Ohio attorney general’s office to file its first lawsuit against HUC-JIR in 2024.

At issue in that case were alleged efforts by HUC-JIR to sell assets belonging to the Cincinnati Klau Library, which HUC-JIR operates. The Klau Library is home to one of the world’s leading collections of Judaica. It is part of the Hebrew Union College Library system, which also includes the Klau Library in New York, the Frances-Henry Library in Los Angeles, and the Abramov Library in Jerusalem.

HUC-JIR ultimately settled the lawsuit, agreeing to a variety of conditions, including;

Adopting a written deaccession policy.
Obeying existing donor restrictions on gifts to the library.
Using proceeds from the sale of any items exclusively for maintaining the library and its collections, absent exceptional and compelling circumstances.
Providing a written list to the state attorney general of all items in the Special Collections and the Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, and a list of applicable donor restrictions.

But before we go further, we need to ask: What does this lawsuit tell us about HUC-JIR?

The answer is not reassuring.

For starters, we need to acknowledge that states typically are reluctant to sue religious organizations. Indeed, that reluctance is based on both First Amendment issues involving the separation of church and state and the political implications of suing a religious entity.

In other words, it takes a lot to draw the attention of a state attorney general in this situation, and the details need to be compelling indeed before anyone files a lawsuit.

Thus, reading between the lines, it is clear that the Ohio attorney general was concerned that HUC-JIR was violating its fiduciary obligations to its donors. And, by extension, there were deep concerns about governance practices and potential breakdown of internal financial controls at HUC-JIR. Indeed, the need to comply with donor restrictions is axiomatic for non-profits and is routinely examined by auditors during an annual financial audit.

As a result, HUC-JIR knew, or had reason to know, that it was on thin ice long before the attorney general stepped in.

Context matters

Before we turn to the matter of the current lawsuit, let’s explore the context in which the Ohio attorney general’s office filed its lawsuit.

Specifically, in 2021, following a series of news reports about sexual abuse by HUC-JIR leadership, multiple Reform Movement organizations began to investigate issues at the school. These efforts led HUC-JIR to retain the law firm Morgan Lewis to investigate the allegations.

The resulting report was damning and found that:

The culture within the school revolved around a “good old boys” mindset, marked by favoritism towards cisgender men and a reluctance among students and faculty to confront professors over allegations of repeated discrimination and harassment.
The school often swept complaints under the rug.

And while it’s important to note that the investigation did not assess the accuracy of claims, Morgan Lewis reported allegations that met a baseline threshold of credibility. These allegations included:

Gender discrimination
Sexual harassment
LGBTQ+ discrimination
Bullying and disrespect
Lack of disability accommodations
Racial discrimination

Relatedly, the investigation noted a series of observations regarding culture and student experiences, including:

Abuse of power and fear of retaliation
Enabling and protecting those who committed misconduct
Culture of favoritism towards men
Academic gatekeeping that impacted women
Tone at the top – board of governors
Differences in campus cultures
Pain and guilt
Reporting and record-keeping concerns
Repeated credible allegations of misconduct

In response, HUC-JIR leadership stated that the school would make teshuvah (repent), work to prevent future incidents, and revise policies for handling misconduct complaints.

Looking a little closer

So, what can we take from the Morgan Lewis investigatory report? Several things:

Many of the allegations in the report are the sort of BS we expect from Christian denominations, including the ostensibly progressive/inclusive Episcopal Church. They are not the sort of thing we would expect from the Reform Movement.
At the same time, many of the allegations sound painfully familiar. Indeed, many would not, even under the best of circumstances, be actionable in the Episcopal Church. For example, judicatories universally brush off bullying as “interpersonal conflict,” while conveniently ignoring the fact that all abuse is traumatic, not just sexual abuse. Relatedly, it is axiomatic that abusive organizations close ranks and act to protect the organization, rather than their members, when confronted with evidence of their abuse.
In that vein, the Morgan Lewis report is painfully thin and self-serving, and seemingly designed to “take the wind out of the sails” of critics, without actually accomplishing anything. Yes, the report identifies several individuals who appear to be repeat offenders, but without verifying the truth or falsity of the allegations, what good is the report?
Relatedly, “repent and do better” is laughably thin. Yes, there were some specific recommendations in that space, but they were painted with such a broad brush that they were irrelevant.

All that said, the depth and breadth of the allegations flagged by the report, and the consistency of they key allegations, are nonetheless shocking and appalling, and should have served as an urgent call to action at every level within the Reform Movement. Indeed, the fact that HUC-JIR is the academic epicenter of Reform Judaism yet is so profoundly troubled calls into question a basic capability: training rabbis and other faith leaders in a world that far too often manifests anti-Semitism.

Thus, it’s deeply disturbing that, four years later, the Ohio attorney general felt it was necessary to wade into this mess.

A copy of the Morgan Lewis report follows.

The current attorney general lawsuit

Now, not even a year after the resolution of the previous lawsuit brought by the Ohio attorney general, HUC-JIR is being sued by the state again over allegations that the school is seeking to sell off much of its Cincinnati campus and close down in-person classes on the site.

At the heart of the controversy is the agreement between HUC and JIR, made at the time of merger, that the new organization would maintain a rabbinical school in Cincinnati in perpetuity. Moreover, the suit alleges that:

Over the following more than 70 years, the school has solicited millions of dollars in charitable donations under the representation that these funds would maintain a school in Cincinnati.
That HUC-JIR in 2022 removed the clause from its merger agreement requiring the operation of a Cincinnati-based rabbinical school.

As a result, the lawsuit seeks a constructive trust over the assets in question, as well as injunctive relief, prohibiting the sale of the Cincinnati assets.

Before we go further, some context is important. Specifically, it is very common in law for situations to arise in which the terms of restricted donations become no longer viable over time. These cases may involve a variety of fact patterns:

A beneficiary may die or, if an organization, cease to exist.
Costs or other circumstances may make continuation of the donor restrictions impractical.
The underlying needs may change.
The donors are no longer alive or are otherwise unavailable to agree to the changes.

Beneficiaries facing these situations typically must petition a local court under the cy-près legal doctrine to amend the underlying restrictions. As part of this process, beneficiaries must notify the state attorney general, who will typically intervene if the proposed changes deviate too far from the original donor intent.

This issue — original donor intent — is the touchstone of the cy-près process, which requires, as much as possible, that the original donor’s intent be followed. And while there is an exception in Ohio law that permits non-profits to amend or drop restrictions on assets valued at less than $250,000 without petitioning a court, the law requires advance notification to the attorney general using a form provided by the attorney general’s office.

Thus, it appears HUC-JIR tried to pull a fast one and sidestep the requirement to petition the courts for a modification of donor restrictions. That’s all the more alarming, given the number of lawyers on the current HUC-JIR board of governors, which includes:

Cary Davidson
Yaron Horovitz
Mitchell Shames
Cathy S. Weiss

Additionally, several members of the board hold MBAs or have high-level non-profit experience.

In other words, this is a board of governors that knows better. And all involved know, or should know, that their fiduciary obligation extends to prudently managing HUC-JIR assets, obeying the law, and operating with transparency/accountability. Thus, while it may indeed be a financially prudent decision to close the Cincinnati campus — and we cannot imagine how the relatively small Reform Movement can sustain four seminaries — this is emphatically not how HUC-JIR should go about potentially closing the campus.

HUC-JIR responds

To be clear, HUC-JIR has responded to the lawsuit, with HUC-JIR president Andrew Rehfeld telling eJewishphilanthropy.com:

We are…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.
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.

The bottom line

As to Rehfeld’s claims, we’re calling BS.

Specifically, unless every single donor who has made restricted donations to support the Cincinnati rabbinical school has agreed in writing to repurposing the funds, or all the funds were solicited subject to a written clause expressly permitting the school to repurpose the funds at its sole discretion, the only legally permissible path forward is to petition the courts.

As to being responsible, consulting the community, and the other rhetoric, that’s all well, great, and good, but it doesn’t obviate the need to petition the courts. As for the bit about the school’s “sustained record of transparency and good faith,” the allegations in the Morgan Lewis report suggest a very different conclusion.

Indeed, at this point, we’re left wondering:

If HUC-JIR is all about being above-board and acting with transparency, why didn’t the school start by notifying the attorney general of its plans and asking whether it should petition the courts to modify the donor restrictions? Wouldn’t that have been the easiest path forward? Especially since the school just got its backside chewed over plans to deaccession books from the Klau Library.

And to be clear: In future posts, we’ll show that the Reform Movement has done little to address the concerns flagged in the Morgan Lewis report.

At the same time, other, even more egregious behavior than flagged in the Morgan Lewis report — including allegations of criminal conduct by prominent Reform rabbis — appears to have been swept under the rug.

Thus, we look at this entire situation with a jaundiced eye. And we believe that members of the Reform Movement can and should ask tough questions about Reform leadership, governance, and accountability. Indeed, the current arrangement, in which the Union for Reform Judaism welcomes synagogues into the movement but claims no responsibility for their oversight, smacks of the Southern Baptist Convention claim that all churches are independent — yet can toss an individual church out if, for example, it welcomes LGBTQ+ people, or allows women to preach. (We’re pretty sure that, if for example, a particular synagogue adopted theological stances inconsistent with those of the Reform Movement, there would be a way to remove that synagogue from membership. But allegations of abuse and criminal conduct aren’t actionable? How does that work?)

A copy of the current lawsuit by the Ohio attorney general follows.

Featured image courtesy of WikiPedia